On The Road Review

What can make driving around on a country road in the sunshine with the wind in your hair even better? Of course, some great music to listen to will make your trip even better and what if you were the one singing and playing it like in “On the Road”, the new game published by Helvetiq and designed by Gabriele Bubola and Leo Colovini?

In this game, each player takes the role (and the mini-van) of a music band that is travelling to reach the mythical “Sunshine Festival” to play for their fans. Along the road, the bands need to promote themselves and gather as many fans as possible so they can be crowned the top performer on stage at the festival. Sounds fun? Let's turn the engines on and get some miles behind us.

'Cause I been on the road, been on the road' – Components

On the road comes with quite a good amount of components packed in a nice size box with a cardboard spacer in it. Although this last one is quite simply designed, I always appreciate when a publisher goes through a bit of extra effort to provide some level of organization and protection to the components. Inside the box, you will then find 33 location tiles (including three larger then the others), 50 movements cards and 4 player aids, 33 location tokens, 4 big ticket tiles, 4 wooden player mini-van tokens, 80 wooden fan star tokens and one cloth bag.

Overall, the quality of the components of On the Road is very good and the design is pretty efficient. The art on the location tiles in particular is really appealing and extremely clear due to the very good work of the artist Miguel Coimbra. Most importantly, the icons on the tiles are pretty self-explanatory so that the game is very easy to follow and easy to grasp at all ages. I was also quite surprised by the wooden pieces. They are quite pleasant to play with and the mini-van pieces in particular are some very well thought pieces. The art of the movement cards and ticket tokens, on the other hand, is very simple and extremely pragmatical. While a bit more detail would have pleased more experienced players, I think the efforts from the designer were mainly aimed to ensure the game could be easily grasped at all ages, hence the choice of limiting the details on the cards.

Finally, I wanted to mention the rulebook, not only because it is carefully designed to help players get the rules in a jiffy but also as it comes in five languages (English, French, German, Spanish and Flemish/Dutch). This explains why there are 48 pages on it while in reality the rules are just a few pages.

“So pick up the pace, there ain't no slowin' me up” - Gameplay

On the Road setup is quite quick as players just need to get a few tokens and cards and then place the locations tiles to randomly create a path from the countryside to the Main Stage. Players then start taking turns one at a time until all the star slots on the Main Stage tile have been filled with fan tokens.

During each tour a player must always travel thought the road they setup by playing a movement card. Each movement card shows a number from 1 to 6 as in any standard d6 dice, but players have a bit more control on which tile they will land after their movement as they always have 3 of these cards in hand and they can chose which one to play during their turn. The direction of travel can also be reversed by landing on a special type of tile that can allow player to move at double speed if they want.

Along the road, players will also encounter four kind of different locations: Forests, Lakes, Mountains and Agricultural areas. Once a player arrives on any of them, they will be able to collect one ticket of the respective location and then improvise a small concert. This action allows the players to grow the number of their fans and add tokens to the bag equal to the amount of the same location ticket they have. In addition, if a player lands on one of the three City tiles, they can draw Fans from the bag and place them on the Main Stage area. As this is a competitive game, a player can place any Fan they draw on the Main Stage if they are of their colour, while those of their opponent are sent to the porta-potty tile.

This part of the game mechanics is quite important as players need to try to get as many Fans into the bag in order to increase the chances to place them on the Main Stage and win the game. However, they also need to ensure they draw frequently otherwise having a lot of Fans in the bag may result in many of them being taken out and sent to the porta-potty tile by their opponents. Luckily, there are ways to get them back into the bag. For example, when a player arrives at the Main Stage, they stop moving the van but they can get one Fan back into the bag every turn and they can also draw every turn.

The game ends when at the end of someone's turn, all the numbered seats on the Main Stage are filled with fans. Whoever has the most number of Fans on it would then be crowned the winning player.

“We're putting the band back together” - Final thoughts

After playing “On the Road” a few times, I think I can safely say that this games puts a smile on your face each time you play it. The concept of the game is fun and the mechanics are good enough to make your games enjoyable for the whole family. What I like the most is how quick this game plays and the minimum downtime between turns, both very positive aspects to keep all your young players super engaged and to make this game a good hit also for casual players.

The two steps mechanics of adding tokens to the bag and then drafting them is also quite fun and provides a nice change in pace every time someone lands on a City. Holding your breath to see which coloured fan is pulled adds a nice bit of tension to the game and a bit of a cliff-hanger to keep things fun.

Having these strengths in mind, it is clear the game has been designed to be played at most ages and to be suitable for more casual gamers. More experienced players may likely find the game a bit too relaxed but I personally enjoy having a few of these low-stake games to cool down, or to have a quick play while chatting with my friends. Overall, On the Board is a very enjoyable game that I would strongly recommend if you are looking for a nice entry level game for the whole family.

That concludes our thoughts on On The Road. Do you agree? Let us know your thoughts and tag us on social media @zatugames. To buy On the Road today click here!