Steam: Rails to Riches
Would I recommend this game? Perhaps, but if it has to be a binary answer, I tend to say “no”. Once you figured out how to play this game, it is some fun if you like strategic board games. But the in-game tutorial wasn’t any helpful to me. In the end, I watched a video on YouTube explaining the physical edition of this game, and figured out the rest by observing the AI and trying out stuff, taking a couple hours untill I finally knew what I’m doing.
There are also some glitches. Rotating track pieces, or changing the piece after you accidentaly picked the wrong one, feels quite clumsy. Undoing an action requires redoing the whole phase. You cannot always zoom out, which is in particular a problem when moving goods. If you accidentally attempt to do an illegal move a warning pops up and you have to wait until it disappears by itself, which is quite annoying. Some elements (like the action cards) are unnecesserily small, so unless you know where you have to click, you don’t have an idea what you are doing (in particular when playing from the couch).
– Real player with 23.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Board Game Strategy Games.
Some of the physical map expansions don’t seem available (yet? ever?) but it’s a good implementation of the boardgame. Fully cross-compatible between Steam and iOS – I’ve had two games going at a time for a while, and I can play my turns on either platform. Game servers have had a tendency to randomly go down on occasion during my several weeks playing so far, but only delays playing for some hours or overnight. Touch play on iOS phones can be a little finicky in dragging and dropping hexes; the undo button can certainly be your friend! Animations could use an option to speed up. (UPDATE CORRECTION: such an option already exists under the options menu, and the fastest version is handy for me.) I’ve turned off the repetitous and somewhat shrill sfx.
– Real player with 16.3 hrs in game
Ticket to Ride
Ticket To Ride has been my favourite board game for about ten years now, and this addaptation is totally worth getting!
For those unfamiliar with the board game; the game has a perfect mix of luck and strategy, making each game challenging yet fun. Your goal is to finish destination tickets (e.g. New York to Los Angeles) by claiming routes on the board that eventually let you have a path going from one city to the other city on your ticket. To claim routes you need to collect train cards in the colours needed, picking your choice from the face up cards or the face down deck if no colours are available you could use. It’s pretty straight forward and you get the hang of it very fast.
– Real player with 386.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Board Game Strategy Games.
The PC adaption (and iPad/iPhone versions too, for that matter) of Ticket to Ride is a very faithful recreation of the classic board game, where the only gameplay differences between it and the physical version are fast and accurate scoring and the fact that enraged board-flipping is no longer a possibility. (Not to mention the bonus of the game + DLC being cheaper than their physical counterparts, and is significantly easier to play with people on the other side of the world!) So, for people who have played the board game before, I think this should be a no-brainer.
– Real player with 142.6 hrs in game
Mexican Train Dominoes Gold
The ease of the app and game was free and it is addictive
– Real player with 393.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Board Game Casual Games.
I like Mexican Trains. Not much else to say.
– Real player with 5.5 hrs in game
RAILED
Railed is a Strategy-Puzzle game with the goal to connect Stations to other Stations and Mines. The further you connect them, the more money you get. You level up by getting a specific amount of Gold Coins, starting with 100.000.000. Which means it is going to get harder and harder every time you want to level up! Having played for almost 45 Hours in total when writing this, i have reached level 5. I am kind of addicted to the game and hope to reach level 9 soon and get all Achievements done. I can recommend this game to everyone that likes Puzzle games where you have to think ahead and reach certain goals.
– Real player with 73.9 hrs in game
I love this game.
I also hate this game.
The tips say you should take your time and plan carefully, but there is no real planning in this game, because all the pieces you get are completely random. You getting a high score comes purely by chance. It gives you a feeling of your choices mattering, but they really don’t because most of the time you’ll get screwed by not getting the piece you need and there’s nothing you can do about it. Sure, you can one-time purchase for 30M a COMPLETELY RANDOM TILE, but the chances are pretty great that it’s going to be the tile you wanted to avoid anyway.
– Real player with 50.0 hrs in game
18Korea
You should know what you are getting with the 18xx games. This is pretty good, both as a client and as an entry in the family of games, including elements that are questionable if you are a purist but are pretty nice if you like your board games to have replayability and some minimum degree of asymmetry, and I am referring to the pre-game draft of assets cards. Also the theme is great and enriched by the Korean war elements.
Buyers beware: there is NO single-player or versus-AI mode. This is a multiplayer only game. As it should be.
– Real player with 4.6 hrs in game
As an avid 18xx fan, I was very hopeful for this title. I’ve only played through a 2 player local multiplayer game(vs myself) to get a feel for the rule set and interface. This rule set is more of the “running good companies” style of 18xx vs the Stock manipulation style of game. All train routes are autocalculated which is a huge time saver over the tabletop games, interface was relatively simple to figure out.
This game has a very unique(as far as my exposure to 18xx which is pretty extensive) mechanic with half of the map getting wiped out once you advance to Era 3(brown tiles). This is the Korean war. Map gets cut at the DMZ(which you can traverse before it happens), North becomes unavailable and all cities in the South are wiped out and have to be rebuilt. I understand it works for a smaller map, but not sure how I feel about it after only one play through but its intriguing for planning and strategy.
– Real player with 2.0 hrs in game
Railroad Ink Challenge
This is my first review, and I have added this up front as I fear I have rambled.
I have only played under 20 games, I have mixed feelings about this version. I have played expansions on Board Game Arena, and I am still trying to sort out what I think advantages and disadvantages are verses what is just different.
Pros:
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I like the buildings aspect of the expansion and their functions.
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There are a set of goals to meet to provide additional scoring, I have not figured out how to master these.
– Real player with 209.1 hrs in game
Addictive, puzzle-like play. This is a good implementation of a good tabletop game (and in fact may be better than the original game, where it was always somewhat problematic to scribe the complex network designs readably).
Yes, there is a BGA version, but this app allows for offline play, supports solo play, and includes the Challenge tokens and special locations on the board, each of which adds a level of beneficial complexity needed for the original game, which was a little too simple.
Hoping they get the supplements out, starting with the original blue/red sets, but it’s already quite good. That’s just improve the replayability.
– Real player with 134.9 hrs in game