Word Traveler

• Designer: Thomas Dagenais-Lesperance
• Publisher: Office Dog
• Players: 2-5
• Age: 10+
• Time: 30-45 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

In Word Traveler, you and your friends are tourists who are checking out the sights of a new city. Each player has their own secret map of locations that they want to visit, and they’ll need help from the other players to reach them.

Taking turns playing the traveler and the locals, you all work together to visit as many of these locations as possible, ideally collecting all of the golden souvenirs that you find. You know only a few words of the local language, however, so the locals — that is, the other players — will do their best to interpret your clues to help get you where you want to go…without getting lost in translation.

To start the game, your group must first decide in which of the four cities you will explore- there are 2 double sided boards, and you must choose between New York, Tokyo, London and Paris.  Each of the boards has 7×7 grid on it with illustrations depicting things that you might see in those cities.  Many of the images are iconic or at least will look familiar.  For younger or less-traveled gamers, there is a small pamphlet for each city that gives a small description of each of the depictions. souvenir markers are placed on certain spaces on the score track; the goal of the game is for the group to collect all six of these markers over the course of the two rounds.  At the start of the game, all players have their marker placed in the central square of the grid.

Each player is given a passport and is dealt a random map card.  This card is placed inside the passport so that the other teammates cannot see it.  On this card, you will see a 7×7 grid with certain spaces marked with a circle (1 point locations) or a star (2 point locations).  Your job is to get the rest of the group to move your marker to the scoring spaces notated on your map card.  

The game is played over two rounds, with only one small difference between the rounds.  The three phases are Prepare, Plan and Travel.

To Prepare, each player draws ten word cards from the deck.  These cards have ideas, nouns or adjectives on the white side, and the reverse “Not XXX” on the black side.  In the first round, players get out their first three numbered arrows.

In the Plan phase, all players simultaneously try to plan a route.  A sand timer is flipped over to limit how much time is spent in planning – mine is about 3 or 4 minutes.  Again, the goal is to get your teammates to move your marker to the scoring spaces on your map card.  However, you can only communicate with your arrows and your word cards.  You place your arrow to show the direction that you want your pawn to move, and then you can place any number of cards underneath it to try to let the group know which image in that direction you want them to stop at.  Continue to plot a course for the next two waypoints; again using an arrow to show which direction to move in and then word cards to designate the correct space in that direction,  When all players are done (or the timer runs out), this phase ends.  You are not obligated to use all your word cards; and in many instances, you won’t have a good use for some of them. 

Then in the travel phase, each of the players takes a turn being the silent guide; using their clues on the table.  The active player announces all their planned moves, stating the direction of movement and which word cards go with the arrow.  The active player is restricted from any further communication.  The rest of the team now can debate as to where the route is supposed to go.  There are numbered footprint tokens that can be placed on the board to show each waypoint.  Once the team agrees on a path; the active player then checks their map card, and the team scores points for any special spaces on the map card which match the location of the footprint markers.  Interestingly, the spaces do not have to be the ones intended by the active player, it just matters if they match the scoring locations on the active player’s map card.  As you move the score marker on the track, if you pass one of the six souvenir markers, pick it up.  Before you move on, it is usually entertaining to discuss the actual intended path, etc.  The active player’s mover remains in the space of the third waypoint.  This process is repeated for all players.

At this point, the first round ends.  All players discard their word cards.  The movers on the board stay in their final resting locations.  The second round is very similar to the first.  Each player takes their map card and flips it over to the other side – there is a different pattern of scoring spaces on the other side.  A new hand of ten word cards is dealt to each player.  The only other difference is that each player now must plan a route of five stops; so all five of the player arrows are used in the second round.  While this does mean that you have to spread your word cards around a bit thinner, there is also the possibility of more scoring as you are making more stops.  The goal is to have collected all the souvenirs.

My thoughts on the game

Word Traveler is the first game that I have seen from Office Dog, a new design house which is being distributed by Asmodee.  Some of the principals have come from established places such as Z-Man, so the pedigree behind the label is solid.  Word Traveler is a nice party game that lets players explore a few different cities during their game night.

The rules are simple to teach, as I’m sure you’ve gathered from reading above.  I have found that it’s easiest just to grab a map card and a few random word cards and make an example 2 step route.  By doing it this way, people can see how to put the map card in the passport, how to stand it up so that no one else can see the map, and once you’ve seen how to plan and score a route, you’ve learned the whole thing.

It’s great that there are four different city boards, and I’ve yet to play a game where someone didn’t have a strong opinion on which board to play (usually because they had already visited said city).  For people who hadn’t yet been to that location, the game is actually a pretty neat way to learn about some of the landmarks – either from the pamphlet which gives some explanation or the inevitable stories that arise in the travel phase where people end up talking about the things they saw and did in that city.

The word cards are mostly adjectives, and they are pretty neutral as far as applying inside information.  For instance, even if I’m playing with my wife, my knowledge of her likes/dislikes, her travel history, her favorite foods, etc. will not really give me much advantage when faced with word cards of: “art / not art”, “big / not big” or “communist / not communist”.  That being said, other words “my favorite”, “paradise” or “perfect” might lead to a particular spot if you know enough about the clue giver.   In the first round, a bum set of cards probably doesn’t affect you too much as you only have to give three clues; however, in the second round, it can be devastating.  Figuring out how to deal with the limitations of your words is a big determinant of success.

There are times in the game where players will get frustrated because their word cards simply don’t line up to the pictures that they want to go to. Sure, the player could choose a different path; but given the time constraints, you often just have to find a route that leads to multiple scoring spots and then go with it.

When the group is trying to solve a path, there are times when everyone is sure about the destination.  However, when there is debate, oftentimes the team then has to look at the next clue to see if they can get some relative confirmation of the intermediate step if there is a sure answer that emanates from one of the possibilities.   Interestingly, I had one round where the route went completely off the rails, missing the first step entirely – but yet the team’s route ended up serendipitously hitting two 2-point spaces by sheer happenstance.   

The game plays quickly as there are only two rounds, and for the most part, players are fairly active throughout each.  There could be some downtime for players who are able to plan their route faster than the others, but the fixed time of the sand timers limits how much time is spent watching everyone else.  

I have played it in a number of settings, and it went over pretty well with a casual crowd at a dinner party.  Most of that group were friends with each other, so we had a lot of common experiences that people could lean on for clues.  At a recent gaming convention, I also played a few times with gaming friends, and while everything worked; it didn’t seem to have that “wow” factor with those folks.   As gamers are wont to do, there was griping about how the cards didn’t work for them, and how there should be some sort of drafting or pass/exchange during the planning phase, etc..  For the gamers, the limitations were a big issue and seemed to be the focus of discussion.    At my dinner party, people were happy just to make the best of the card selection and we all laughed at our mistakes (in both planning and deduction).

In the right group, this is a nice way to involve people in a game, have some lively discussion and perhaps even some reminiscing about travels to far away cities.     

Until your next appointment,

The Gaming Doctor