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We are here! Or there! Or somewhere!
I have zero sense of direction. Being neuro-spicy and unable to tell left from right makes any situation where I have to direct or find extra interesting. Luckily, with our son on our team, Word Traveller has proved to be a bit of an unexpected hit at home!
Passports Please!
A co-operative, real-time game where we are travelling around one of four big cities, our task is to work out which features and sights we are visiting as individuals. Some are worth 1 points, others 2 points. The twist is that we each have a secret map which we use to plot our tours, and we only have a few words and arrow tokens to nudge our fellow tourists in the right direction.
The rules are super light but quite strict! At the start of the game, you will place a secret map inside your passport cover and place your meeple on the centre square of the chosen city board. First round, you have 3 (and 5 in the last round) direction arrows which will get you to 3 spots on the board. You also have ten word cards to give hints which are either positive (e.g. spicy) or negative (e.g. not sporty) which you can allocate to your arrows to give clues. Everybody gets a set time to simultaneously plan their route and when the sand runs out it’s on to players taking turns playing the Traveller to describe their journey. When the time runs out, you’ll have three arrows with a column of cards underneath each one. You don’t have to use all of your arrows or words, but you will probably want to! And remember, when you are the tourist, you may only use those words!
Your teammates (Locals) can discuss where they think you are going. As they decide on a location they will add a footprint standee, moving from location to location. Once the footprints are on the board, it is time for the Traveller to reveal their journey. Points gained for correctly guessing the stops move the pigeon around the outer track printed on the board, and if you collect any special souvenirs keep them safe! You can also get bonus points if the Locals send you to a site you weren’t intending to visit but it is marked as a point of interest on your map! After everybody has played their turn, you discard the word cards you had, get a set of new ones, flip your secret map to the other side, and then you have to plot your next route from where you finished in the previous round. After 2 rounds, the game is over and it’s time to work out whether you have collected enough souvenirs to be top of the score chart!
Final Thoughts!
Word Traveller is a super light, fun family level co-operative game which is a great choice when you have younger gamers or non-gamers in your group. The components are really well made – the board is bright, the tokens are lovely chonky wooden pieces, the passport holders are the real deal, and the cardboard standees and souvenir tokens are thick and solid. There is also a detailed travel guide for each of the four city boards which make a lovely thematic addition.
Plus there are four different city boards and 165 word cards so each game will combine a different combination of sites, descriptions, and directions.
With rules you can learn in under 60 seconds, you can get cracking as soon as the bits are out of the box. And although it is super simple to learn (so you wouldn’t expect a lengthy game) it still feels like it is over really fast – just two rounds to gain six golden souvenirs. This was ideal for playing 2 player and 3 player with our 9 year old son. But when I was playing with just my husband, the “oh it’s over already” feeling left us wanting a little more at the 2 adult player count. But as you would expect, the game scales depending on player count. The more Locals there are doing the guessing, the further round the track the golden souvenirs are placed to keep up the challenge. And it shines brighter as the number of players goes up.
Our 9 year old really enjoyed Word Traveller. He was able to grasp the rules and mechanics immediately – he even worked out that sometimes not landing on a site could be used to get him closer to more two point spots in later rounds instead! And watching him work out which words can best describe each spot visiting is fascinating for me as his mum. I’m always an advocate of learning through play, and this game fires up his vocabulary as well as his imagination and orienteering skills!
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