The current explosion in popularity of European-style boardgames has tended towards older players, adults or teenagers, without as much emphasis on the youngest players who, at least historically, were a prime target for boardgame publishers. A few companies have produced stripped-down, introductory versions of their Eurogames for kids aged 8 and under, but until now none of them had appeared in app form. Asmodee Digital changed that with today’s release of their Ticket to Ride: First Journey app for iOS devices, Android, and Steam, and as you’d expect from an Asmodee product, it looks incredible, plays smoothly, and is extremely stable and reliable. At $4.99, it’s a steal for folks who want to introduce their younger kids to the glories of tabletop gaming.
Ticket to Ride: First Journey is a simplified version of the boardgame Ticket To Ride, which is itself among my top five games all time for its own simplicity and universal appeal, with First Journey – sold exclusively at Target – aimed at kids six and up (and probably fine for kids as young as four, as long as they can match colors). The board itself is smaller, with fewer cities on it and fewer trains required to connect cities that remain – there are no five-train connections between cities, for example.
If you’re already familiar with the rules and mechanics of the full versions of Ticket to Ride, here are the main differences between that game and the First Journey version:
- You draw two train cards from the deck rather than choosing from five visible options.
- You start the game with two route tickets (and have no choice).
- When you finish one ticket, you get another ticket.
- Everyone knows when you’ve finished a route.
- Each ticket is worth one point; first to six points wins.
- You get a point for building a continuous route from coast to coast.
- There is no penalty for failing to complete a route.
- Even in the two-player game, players can use both routes between two cities, and you can’t occupy both routes to block another player.
- Each player has 20 train cars; as in the regular game, if a player places all his/her cars, that also triggers game-end.
The board is streamlined, and the cities on your route cards are animated in the app until you complete them. Each city has a unique icon, like a beaver in Montreal, a totem pole in Seattle, or a movie camera in Los Angeles. The pictures are bright and the text is very clean – not quite Comic Sans, but in that vein. You can drag your train cards to a route to place them; it’s a little fussy about your placement, but the app zooms in on the two cities to help you direct the arrow to the correct route. When you have two colors of tracks between cities, the one you can use is evident and the one you can’t use shows up with lock symbols on it. Some of the routes are extremely short – one track of three trains, two tracks of one or two trains each – so it doesn’t take long to complete your tickets.
On a turn, you have just three options: take two train cards, place trains on the map, or trash your two current route tickets and draw two new ones. That keeps turns quicker than in the base game, since no one is hemming and hawing over which train cards to select, and gives you an out when other players have done something to prevent you from completing a route card.
The route-planning aspects of the main game are still here but much simpler. There’s no longest route bonus, just the “coast to coast” bonus, so building a more efficient route that encompasses your two initial tickets is more about hoping you’ve already completed tickets you’ll draw later in the game or will at least be closer to finishing them. That means less need for the long-term planning of the original game, which makes it easier for younger players to keep up with the adults.
For the youngest players, First Journey might still present the frustration that comes from getting boxed out of a route, especially with three or four players. You can use your turn to trash your two current route cards, however, and draw two new ones, which at least gives you a chance to draw something you’ve already completed or at least will be able to complete. It also means that showing other players your route cards isn’t a negative, so if parents want to help their kids it doesn’t hurt the parents’ ability to play their own hands. The game still has a fair amount of luck involved in card draws of both types, and it’s possible to just have an unlucky game, which cuts both ways with younger players since they can be helped by randomness as well as irritated by it. There are three levels of AI difficulty; I only played against the Hard AI, which I think would be hard for a young player new to the game but isn’t challenging for someone who’s played the full Ticket to Ride.
The game appears to end immediately when one player reaches six points, rather than allowing all players a final turn as in the base game, which seems to give the first player an advantage. It’s possible, therefore, to have a player complete his/her fifth route and then draw a ticket for a route s/he has already completed, ending the game on the spot.
The game comes with a U.S. map and players can unlock a Europe map with a free Asmodee online account. The Europe map will be a standalone game in physical form (due out to U.S. retail in January) and includes a coast-to-coast style bonus, which is more of a west-to-east bonus with players connecting Dublin, Brest, or Madrid to Moscow, Rostov, or Ankara (represented by a samovar rather than an iron fist). There are also collectible stamps within the app for players to earn with each victory.
The First Journey app is ideal for players too young for the full game, with the inflection point probably somewhere around age 7 or 8 depending on your kids’ experiences with better boardgames. For older kids and adults, I recommend the Ticket to Ride app itself, which is among the best boardgame apps available and allows you to buy different maps as in-app purchases to give you different experiences and new rules tweaks.
for over a year, but we always seemed to overlook it for other games I needed to review for Paste* or in favor of a longtime favorite of my daughter’s (like Splendor). We broke it out this weekend, however, and after a few more plays I can give it a fair review: It’s awesome, one of the best games we own that’s not just suitable for her to play (she’s nine), but which she can fully understand without making us feel like we’re playing something dumbed down for the kids.
is one of the smallest and simplest games I’ve encountered yet; the whole game comprises seven custom dice and fourteen square cards. Its rules are similarly short and elegant, fitting on both sides of one small page, even with room for some images and explanations to avoid potential confusion. It’s lightweight due to the moderate randomness involved in gameplay, but there are also clear strategic decisions for players to make, ones that my eight-year-old daughter could grasp and that give the game good replay value.
is probably the best $7 you’ll spend on a game, and the most surprising too – the entire game is a 16-card deck, and the theme looks silly, but the gameplay itself is fun and fast as long as you have more than two players.
. I’ve only played 
The rare kids’ boardgame (just $12!) that is still a fun play for adults, where players compete to score points by placing and moving their penguins across a board of hexagonal ice tiles … but the hitch is that the tile you leave then drops into the ocean, so the board changes as you go and you can even trap an opponent’s penguin if you plan it right. 
: A light two- to four-player game, relatively high in the luck department for this list, with more opportunities to screw your opponent in a two player game, whereas with four players you’re focusing more on your own strategy and less on others’. In the game, players compete to fill out their own boards of 16 spaces by drawing island tiles from a central 4×4 grid, where the available selections depend on the movement of a boat token that travels around that grid’s perimeter. Players must form completed islands to receive points, and lose points for open spaces. Currently out of print, but amazon has plenty of new copies through marketplace sellers. Complexity: Low.
. I need to play this some more, but it does have promise as a 2-4 player game that actually works with two players. Each player competes to place meeples and buildings on a rectangular grid by playing cards that match the row and/or column in which he’s placing the pieces. Points increase when players form larger groups of farmers on adjacent squares, place buildings next to farmers already on the board, or accumulate coal and gold tokens by building mines. It’s pretty simple and quick to play, but not that deep strategically. Complexity: Low.
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. Another deckbuilder, this one just for two players, playing very much like Dominion but with a space-exploration/combat theme. Each player starts with 50 points and must knock the other player down to zero to win. Players begin with ten cards, seven worth 1 coin each, three worth 1 combat point each, and on each turn can buy cards and/or attack at will. Scrapping cards (i.e., the Chapel strategy) is pretty easy, however, so the main twist is that players can build a wall of “bases” to protect himself – but those bases are pretty easily destroyed after the first few rounds because players can easily get to 6-8 attack points per turn. It’s a solid design but replay value was limited. The app looks great but the AI was a little light. Complexity: Medium-low.
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. Monopoly for grown-ups, and one of the oldest games on the list. Build hotel chains up from scratch, gain a majority of the shares, merge them, and try to outearn all your opponents. The game hinges heavily on its one random element – the draw of tiles from the pool each turn – but the decisions on buying stock in existing chains and how to sell them after a merger give the player far more control over his fate than he’d have in Monopoly. There’s a two-player variant that works OK, but it’s best with at least three people. The game looks a lot nicer now; I have a copy from the mid-1980s that still has the 1960s artwork and color scheme. Complexity: Low.
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. Risk for grown-ups, with absolutely zero random chance – it’s all about negotiating. I wrote about the 
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. Goa had been out of print for at least five years, but there was enough of a clamor for a reprint that Z-Man Games reissued it entirely, with a small expansion included. It’s similar to two other games higher on the list, Bora Bora and Castles of Burgundy, in that players work off both a central board and individual player cards, taking resources from the central space and using them to advance tokens or development in their own play area. In Goa, the central board has a 5×5 area of tiles for players to acquire via a convoluted auction process, but after that the process is more straightforward: You’re a Portuguese spice merchant, using spices, ships, and colonists to try to build plantations and settle colonies while also increasing your production power across five separate categories on your Progress card. It offers a lot of decisions despite using just three core resources, and once you know the rules game play moves much faster. The artwork could use some help; my wife says the drawing of the merchant/colonist “looks like he wants to oppress me.” Complexity: Medium.
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. One of two 2013 releases on my list, Bora Bora is one of the best-looking games we own and plays like a more complex version of the Castles of Burgundy. Two to four players compete to occupy territories on a central board of five islands, then using resources they acquire there to build on their individual player cards … but that’s just one of many ways to gain points in this game, where you can also hire natives to perform tasks or earn shells or status points, and you can trade in shells for jewelry worth points at game-end, and you can get bonuses for collecting certain combinations of cards, natives, or resources. It’s almost too much – you have so many options the game can slow down if players start overthinking it – but if you like Castles of Burgundy this is a good follow-up purchase. Complexity: Medium.
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. Full review coming soon on Paste; I’ve filed but don’t have a publication date yet. It’s a map game, set in Ancient Rome, built around trade and economics rather than conflict or claiming territories. Much better with four players than with two, where there isn’t enough interaction on the map to force players to make harder decisions. Runner-up for the Kennerspiel des Jahres (Connoisseur’s game of the year) this year to Istanbul, which I will also review for Paste in the next few weeks. Complexity: Medium.
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: I gained a new appreciation for this game thanks to 
I bought via amazon. You’re a farmer trying to raise enough food to feed your family, but also trying to grow your family so you have more help on the farm. The core game play isn’t that complex, but huge decks of cards offering bonuses, shortcuts, or special skills make the game much more involved, and require some knowledge of the game to play it effectively. My wife felt this game felt way too much like work; I enjoyed it more than that, but it is undeniably complex and you can easily spend the whole game freaking out about finding enough food, which about a billion or so people on the planet refer to as “life.” Complexity: High.
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: We don’t pull this game out as much as we did a few years ago, and I’ve still got it ranked this high largely because of its value as an introduction to Eurogames, one of the best “gateway games” on the market. Without this game, we don’t have the explosion in boardgames we’ve had in the last fifteen years. We don’t have Ticket to Ride showing up in Target, a whole wall of German-style games in Barnes & Noble, or the Cones of Dunshire on network television. Only four games on this list predate Settlers, from an era where Monopoly was considered the ne plus ultra of boardgames and you couldn’t complain about how long and awful it was because you had no basis for comparison. The history of boardgames comprises two eras: Before Catan, and After Catan. We are fortunate to be in 19 A.C. 
expansion balances out the core game’s low value on the wool resource, but also makes the game take about 50% longer to play. It was, and is, a great starting point if you’ve never played anything on this list, and is also one of the few games here that has some traction outside of the boardgamer culture, although that’s improving as well. There’s a brand-new expansion called 
that introduces new scenarios and “missions” that add new ways to gain victory points. I haven’t picked that up, as we’ve just got lots of other games we prefer after playing this one so often over the years. Complexity: Low.
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expansion adds new roles and cards while upping the complexity further. The 
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game – includes money cards, action cards, and victory points cards. Each player begins with seven money cards and three victory cards and, shuffling and drawing five cards from his own deck each turn, must add cards to his deck to allow him to have the most victory points when the last six-point victory card is purchased. I don’t think we have a multi-player game with a smaller learning curve, and the fact that the original set alone comes with 25 action cards but each game you play only includes 10 means it offers unparalleled replayability even before you add an expansion set. We own 
(which is outstanding) and 
(which I find a little weird), plus a standalone expansion further up this list. I can also vouch for this as appropriate for a young player – my daughter (who started playing this at age six) understands the base game well enough to play it without me deliberately throwing the game to keep it competitive. Complexity: Low.
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. Intrigue can be combined with the base game of Dominion, but unlike other Dominion expansions (of which there are now approximately 82, with a new one released every other week, or so it seems) Intrigue is a complete game right out of the box because it includes the money and point cards. And it’s better than the original game when both are viewed without any expansions because it’s more interactive – Intrigue lives up to its name in the sense that you should spend much of your time either plotting against your neighbors or trying to defend yourself, which makes the “Big Money” strategy in the base game much less effective. The changes make the game longer, but more even, and more fun. Complexity: Medium.
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to anyone who gets the base Ticket to Ride game, as it has larger, easier-to-shuffle cards and offers more routes for greater replayability. We also own the Swiss and Nordic boards, which only play two to three players and involve more blocking than the U.S. and Europe games do, so I don’t recommend them. The 
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expansion, which I like mostly for the Builder, an extra token that allows you to take an extra turn when you add on to whatever the Builder is working on, meaning you never have to waste a turn when you draw a plain road tile if you sit your Builder on a road. We also have 
, which we’ve only used once; it adds some double-or-nothing tiles to roads and cities, a giant meeple that counts as two when fighting for control of a city/road/farm, as well as the added meeples needed to play with a sixth opponent. Complexity: Low/medium-low for the base game, medium with expansions.
is another cooperative board game by Matt Leacock, designer of the fantastic cooperative game Pandemic (