I’m not a board game guy; never have been, don’t really see it happening in the future. But I am a geek, so the other day I was watching The Tabletop on Geek & Sundry, specifically the episode where Colin Ferguson and Anne Wheaton play Ticket to Ride. There was no way I was going to sit there for close to 30 minutes to watch people play a board game, right?
Yup, there was, and when I finished I thought, “I wonder if Ticket to Ride is available on the iPad or iPhone?” Sure enough, it is, and it’s called Ticket To Ride Pocket, and it’s a blast to play. Hop onboard after the jump.
Simple But Complex
Ticket to Ride is a board game with lots of cards, and explaining it isn’t exactly the easiest of processes, but I’ll give it a shot. You’re presented with a map of the US of A, littered with different dotted lines of varying colors, each one terminating in a city on the map. You have 45 train cars at your disposal. It’s your job to place the train cars on the map in the best route possible to connect the cities together. What cities you ask? The ones that you’re given at the beginning of the game. You draw three cards from the deck with three different routes. Pick as many of them as you like, and that’s where you go. Each route has a point amount assigned to it as well.
Don't worry, there's a tutorial mode as well.
You can’t just start dropping train cars on the board, however. To play a route, you need to have cards that match that color and number of spaces. So if you have to make a connection between two cities and there are five red spaces between them, you’ll need five red cards or a combination of red and wild cards. Making things a bit easier are the gray tracks, which can be played by any color at all.
Getting to the Points
Scoring is an interesting process in both the board and iPhone versions of the game. In the physical version, there’s a card that tells you how many points are assigned to whatever path you choose to take. So if you want to go across six spaces, you’ll get 15 points. Move one space, you get one point and so on. The iPhone version works the same way, but that card is hidden in the Rules section if you want to see it. Otherwise, the game does the math for you.
The goal is to connect two cities together with your trains.
As the game progresses, you’ve got another goal to consider as well. The person who has the longest route gets an additional 10 points. This means that even the person who may have the most points during the game may not win, because they could have shorter routes. Plus, those destination cards have point values as well, so that will change things up as they go, too. And since your opponents don’t know your destinations, they can’t block you unless they make an educated guess based on your train placements.
You get points for each route completed.
Again, this is a bit tricky to explain, but it’s a heck of a good time. Don’t worry if you get lost either, there’s a tutorial mode that you can use if need be.
Multiplayer
The nice thing about board games is that you can huddle everyone around the table and have them bond together while throwing dice and hucking Monopoly figures at each other. You’ve got the same options with Ticket to Ride Pocket, and then some. There’s Local play, where you sync up with a buddy via Bluetooth and have at it; Multi play, where you challenge friends in Game Center; and Pass & Play, where you hand your iPhone across the room to play with your friends.
There's a multiplayer option as well.
I didn’t get the chance to test out the multiplayer options here, mostly because I was too hooked to ask anyone else to play. But that’s OK — you can play against 1-3 AI characters, and all of them have different strategies — or at least it feels that way.
The Final Call
Is Ticket to Ride Pocket fun? Oh yeah. And it’s super addicting too, which is part of the reason why I recommend the game so highly. In the course of writing this review, I found myself picking up the game repeatedly — it’s just that fun to play. Plus, the difficulty curve is fairly steep as well. I lost the first 10 times I played it (partially because I didn’t really figure out the scoring system correctly), and I kept on plugging away. And yet, it is possible to just pick it up and play a quick game, making it about as perfect a game as possible.
Should you get it? Yes. Yes you should, and if they raise the price to $49.99 and includes a free coonskin cap, you do it. Because not only would you look great with a raccoon tail hanging from the back of your head like some kind of striped mullet, but the game is worth almost any price.