Trekking the World is a very ‘route one’ board game title.

You are indeed, Trekking the World.

Gleaming monuments and sunrise vistas await your arrival as you traverse the globe to experience its many wonders. Will you explore ancient ruins deep in the jungle, or go wild on a savanna safari? Build your bucket list of destinations and take a whirlwind tour to visit them all – but hurry, your fellow travellers might just beat you there!

Trekking the World Game Play

You start off with a big map of the world on the table that you’ll be trekking later. Each player chooses a different airport to place their trekker pawn in. Cubes are randomly drawn and placed on the non-airport spaces all over the world.

It’s a card game so now all the cards… 4 destination cards are flipped face-up from a deck as the ‘selection row’ as well as a specific 2 journey cards picked from a selection. Trek cards are shuffled and 3 are dealt to each player. This deck is then placed with 4 laid out as another selection row.

Players take turns over 2 phases: The move phase then the choose phase.

Move Phase

At the start of a players turn they MUST move. If they start at an airport they can go to any other airport for free.

Discard any number of trek cards and move that many spaces exactly. A player can’t backtrack spaces or move through an opponents pawn which means you need to figure out different routes around the board to get to where you want to be.

We played this on Board Game Arena so spaces were highlighted as we discarded cards which helped a lot.

If there is a souvenir cube on the spot you finish movement you add it to your little suitcase board used to store these cubes. You can only store so many of each colour and any extra are stored in a separate box for end game scoring.

If you take the last cube from one of the 6 regions the board is divided up into you take the bonus token for that region. If you have 2 or more of a certain colour and have more than any other player you take the ‘most souvenir’ tile belonging to that colour, taking it from another player if you surpass them.

Choose Phase

Here you can do one of 3 things:

Draw 2 trek cards from the selection row (or off the top of the deck) and then refill the row.

Take a Tour by choosing a face-up destination card that matches the space your pawn is in. Then, discard trek cards matching the icons shown on the destination. Keep the destination card next to your suitcase and refill the row.

Journey by discarding 2 trek cards with icons matching those on the available journey cards and resolve. These cards can be changed from game to game but allow you to move to an airport or take a tour using fewer symbols etc

Game End

When 5 of the 6 region bonus tiles have gone or someone gets their 5th destination card, the game ends at the end of that players turn.

When this happens, the triggering player finishes their turn and the game ends immediately.

Players get points for the most souvenir tiles collected, those region bonus tiles, points from completing tours, destination cards and souvenir sets. The player with the most points is the winner.

Theme

Gameplay-wise it’s not inspiring as a theme. You’re moving around a board weirdly not passing through other players. Also, you HAVE to move so if you don’t have enough resources to take a tour you have to circle it, for reasons.

Imagine circling around Western Europe, Northern Africa then Eastern USA because you want to see something in Paris.

But, the detail in locations, the artwork of the locations and “I’ve been there” or “I’d like to go there” conversation is fun.

Components & Artwork

The artwork is nice, really nice. It would make decent game room posters… Actually, I think this is more worthy of mainstream wall art for the house it’s that nice. I would have it in my lounge if it would fit in the rest of the decor, which it doesn’t but still.

The components look as standard as standard can be.

Ease of Teaching & Accessibility

This is very much a gateway game so it is easy to explain.

However, there are lots of little things to remember and a few restrictions to keep in mind. It’s not that tricky though.

Trekking the World Summary

Hard to not think ‘Pandemic‘ because of the board layout and point to point movement even though the games are very different. But even though I don’t enjoy Pandemic that much, this was not as even enjoyable as that.

For comparable games, apart from moving around the world like Pandemic, I have no idea. PARKS is better at the whole visiting thing, Ethnos is my favourite of that Ticket to Ride style card drawing thing.

Both PARKS and Ethnos are more fun to play.

It just felt very formulaic and basic. I mentioned circling locations because you HAVE to move. In reality, you’d stay at the same hotel for a day or two right?

Also, why would you visiting Poland stop me from getting to Russia? I don’t get why you can’t go through other people.

Something I learned when playing this game is that ‘restrictions that can not be explained by theme feel much worse than the happiness of unthematic gains’.

It’s a very average game.

Jesta ThaRogue