{"id":10394,"date":"2024-09-22T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-22T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=10394"},"modified":"2024-09-21T16:18:44","modified_gmt":"2024-09-21T20:18:44","slug":"parks-roll-hike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2024\/09\/22\/parks-roll-hike\/","title":{"rendered":"Parks Roll & Hike."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The game Parks<\/a> has become a huge hit and a franchise of sorts for publisher Keymaster Games, with two expansions, a lighter spinoff game called Trails, and now a roll-and-write version called Parks Roll & Hike<\/a>. It carries forward the theme of the original Parks game, but it\u2019s a completely different game \u2013 it\u2019s a lighter roll-and-write game that has some superficial similarities to Parks\/Trails but almost nothing in common in the play experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Parks Roll and Hike takes place over three days, each lasting 4-5 turns, where players will draft dice on each turn between an orange Leader die and several white dice. The dice show symbols that allow you to mark off certain spaces on your scoresheets, which come in cute little notebooks that represent hikers\u2019 journals, definitely the best part of the game\u2019s compact design. You\u2019ll fill raindrops in your canteen to score based on how many columns you\u2019ve filled at the end of each day. You\u2019ll draw sights on mini journal pages and then write three lines in each to gain bonuses. You\u2019ll mark off spaces in four wildlife rows, earning bonus actions for each and then earning points for certain pairs of wildlife sightings. You\u2019ll fill in sun circles that allow you to choose the Leader die on later turns. And you can fill in binocular circles to earn a bonus for every two, starting with free wildlife sightings. At the end of each day, you get some additional bonuses from the Sunset bonuses above the mini journals, and you can spend extra suns to buy some bonus specific to the trail you\u2019re hiking. (The game comes with six trails, each with some unique scoring options.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The game itself couldn\u2019t be much easier \u2013 you pick a die and mark off one or two spaces, then maybe mark off something else because you unlock a bonus. The scoresheets are easy to read and understand, and it\u2019s not the sort of roll-and-write where you get long chains of bonuses like Three Sisters or the Clever series, so turns are pretty quick. You could probably teach this to anyone even if they\u2019ve never played anything more complicated than Yahtzee or Qwixx.<\/p>\n\n\n

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As with most roll-and-writes, there\u2019s a solo mode where you\u2019re mostly just trying to rack up the highest score possible. I haven\u2019t gotten over 42 points, which the game says is a good score but not close to the best, because I clearly haven\u2019t figured out any of the best ways to chain bonuses. In the solo game, you get one die for free on each turn, including the Leader die, but if you spend two suns you can choose the Leader die plus another \u2013 and then you get to sketch whatever landmark is showing at the next stop on the trail. It\u2019s a pretty significant benefit and there\u2019s a timing element to it, since you can\u2019t do it on every turn, and there will be landmarks you want to sketch more than others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I sound a little conflicted on Parks Roll & Hike, well, I am. I like it and have played it quite a few times since I got my review copy at Gen Con. I like most roll-and-writes anyway, and this is an above-average one for me. I also am not sure if it brings anything new at all to the genre, and I don\u2019t think the theme totally comes through in the game \u2013 which is very tough to do with most roll-and-writes, for what it\u2019s worth; Three Sisters is the best example of a game of this style that integrates its theme, but it\u2019s a rarity. Most roll-and-writes or flip-and-writes are just about checking boxes and chaining bonuses, and Parks Roll & Hike does that well enough for me to recommend it, even though I feel like it\u2019s missing a little something in the style department.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The game Parks has become a huge hit and a franchise of sorts for publisher Keymaster Games, with two expansions, a lighter spinoff game called Trails, and now a roll-and-write version called Parks Roll & Hike. It carries forward the theme of the original Parks game, but it\u2019s a completely different game \u2013 it\u2019s a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[60,1126],"class_list":["post-10394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-boardgames","tag-roll-and-write-games","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10394"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10395,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10394\/revisions\/10395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}