Let's Make a Bus Route

EvEvanstar8.5

This is a delightful flip and write game. Each player gets an asymmetric board where they cross off icons as they progress through the game. Then a card is flipped that has a symbol on it. For each player the symbol represents a different series of one to three lines. In turn order, they draw those lines on a central board, trying to be the first to complete objective cards, trying to complete their secret objective before the end of the game, and crossing spaces at intersections that contain various types of riders, then crossing the spaces those riders want to go to in order to bank their points on your player board. The board itself is visually busy, but your eyes do adjust to it. There's additional player interaction in the form of a mechanism where you encounter "traffic" if you send your bus along a route someone else has already drawn on. The player with the most traffic marked at the end of the game takes a small but significant penalty. I love the theme here, I love the planning elements. You can take increasing score penalties to alter one of the lines in the pattern that got flipped, and you get an extra length of line if you end your movement perfectly at an intersection, so there's that delightful sense of always feeling like you can do better next time. I don't know how much replayabilty there is yet, but having played this once I'm really itching for more. The thing that really makes this also stand out for me is that everyone is drawing on a central board, so it feels less isolated than most roll and writes I've encountered. It also feels less luck driven than many roll and writes I've encountered. ★ Art, Iconography and components functional ★ Clever or interesting mechanisms ★ Reasonably low downtime between turns with mildly AP players ★ Multiple plays stay interesting ★ Low or mitigatable luck elements ★★★★☆ Raw enjoyment