Parks Roll & Hike

• Designers: Henry Audubon and Mattox Shuler
• Publisher: Keymaster
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 10+
• Time: 30 minutes
• Amazon Affiliate Link: https://amzn.to/3XuSIqV 
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Welcome to Parks: Roll & Hike, the newest, diciest addition to the Parks family! During the game, you draft dice and log your selections in your handy journal. Record your time in the mountains, forests, and fields through drawing. Keep a log of all the wildlife you spot to earn mid-hike bonuses, and don’t forget to stay hydrated!

Parks: Roll & Hike features six US National Parks, illustrated by Andreea Dumuta, which bend the rules of the game and create a unique gaming experience every time you play. Revisit the world of Parks in its most portable, everyday carry format yet, with everything you need to toss it in your pack and hit the trails.

To set up, give each player a Logbook and a pencil. Place the Trail board on the table and then randomize the 5 Trail tokens to the sites on the board.  The Group Token is placed at the Trailhead.  Choose a Park card to explore for this game; read the special rules for this park aloud to all players.  Roll the 5 dice (1 yellow and 4 white) and place them above the board.  Designate a Start Player, and all other players gain some starting resources based on their starting position.

The game will be played over 3 Days, each with a Hiking Phase followed by a Sunset phase. On your turn, you can take one of the available white dice (free) or the yellow Lead Hiker die (costs a sun).   You will take the action on the face showing of the chosen die – these icons represent the different experiences of your day, and you will make appropriate marks in your logbook:

• Sun – circle one outline in your Sun area (when you use the sun, cross it out)
• Water drops – fill in a drop in your canteen area, going top to bottom from left to right
• Tree, Mountain, Flower, or Arrowhead – two options… Either fill in a circle in the matching area of your Sunset section OR sketch a landmark in an empty left page of your journal area.
• Pencil – draw in one line on the right side of a journal page that has an icon drawn on the left side.  If you complete a two page journal spread (icon on left, all lines filled in on right), you get a bonus as seen at the top of the section
• Fish, turtles, bears or birds – cross out the appropriate box in the Wildlife area, going from left to right in each row and then take the actions in the box you crossed out.  When you cross out boxes above and below a score bonus, circle that bonus to show you will score it at game end
• Binoculars – fill in any empty circle in the Binoculars area. If you complete a pair of circles, immediately take an action matching the icon next to the filled in pair.

When you take the yellow Lead Hiker die, move the Group Token to the next space on the trail.  You will get two actions, the one on the yellow die as well as the one showing on the Trail token you have just reached.  After you have taken the actions, all players can write one line in their Journal area on a page matching the icon on the Trail token.   All of the dice are then passed to the next player who rolls them all and takes their turn.

If the Group Token reaches the final site of the Trail, the hike ends and you move to the Sunset phase.  All players look at the Sunset area of their logbook, and for each filled in circle, you do something: drawing a line in a corresponding journal page, gaining resources or rolling the yellow die and doing whatever the roll says. Then, look at the Park card and optionally spend Sun resources to take the special action listed there one time.  Finally, look at your Canteen area and score the number of points listed beneath your right-most fully filled in Water drop column.  (Mark this in the leftmost spots in the scoring row in your logbook).

Reset the board and repeat this two more times.  After the third day, there is some end-game scoring, all marked on the scoring row found in the bottom left of your logbook:

• Canteen points which were recorded at the end of each
• Journal: 1 point per line drawn in the journal plus a 5 point bonus if you’ve sketched an icon in every page in the journal
• Wildlife: add up all the circled score bonuses in the Wildlife area
• Park Scoring: each Park has a special scoring rule printed on the card

The player with the most points wins.

My thoughts on the game

For a roll and write game in a little box, there is a lot going on here!  This is one of those RAW that really feels like a board game.  Sure, there is a miniscule board that you use – so fine, call it a “board” game if you want – but what I’m getting at is that there is a surprising amount of depth to this title – which overall remains easy to teach and relaxing to play.

I have now taken this game with me on two trips, and it fits well on an airplane tray table as well as the little console in my car (using the box as a dice tray of sorts).  For me it has worked both as a solo game as well as a competitive game with other people.

Each of the six parks leads to a slightly different game given the rules printed on each card.  You can choose a particular favorite, or draw at random to change things up.  I have found that I really need to shift my strategy based on the particular rules for the park.  I can also envision a super easy set of expansions/promos as new Parks (and new rules) can easily be produced.

The dice give you plenty of options, and there are plenty of ways to get bonus actions depending on the dice you take.  It does feel gratifying to set up and then execute a chained set of actions.    I also like the slightly unpredictable pacing of the game – while it usually happens that most dice are taken before someone takes the yellow Lead Hiker die; there are sometimes irresistible combinations of Lead Hiker die and next trail marker action icon that will cause someone to pay the sun and move to the next stop on the Hike.  If this happens twice in a day, that could really mess with some people’s strategy… If you get a lot of suns, you can try to control the tempo of the game, taking double actions whenever you can and simply not giving the other players enough time to do what they want.

Component wise – this game keeps to the high standard for Keymaster Games.  The tiny little box with strong magnetic closures is really nice, and nearly everyone who has played the game  has commented on how nice the scoring sheet booklets are – they really remind me of the expensive and classy Field Notes notebooks.   For now, you’re limited to the sheets in the books, but you get 4 books x 28 sheets, so you’d have to be playing this A LOT to run out.  Keymaster has said they will sell refills of the books… (or you could be like me and have already pried a few out of the stapled books to laminate as backups).

Parks Roll & Hike is a nice design that provides you with a really nice laid back game.  It looks beautiful, and you can certainly imagine yourself wandering through the different national parks, taking in the sights, making sure you drink enough water and then logging your experiences in your diary every night.

Amazon Affiliate Link: https://amzn.to/3XuSIqV 

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale Y
• Neutral.
• Not for me…