En Route

• Designer: Philipp Ivanov 
• Publisher: Crowd Games
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 14+
• Time: 20-40 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4gtlocY
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

People love traveling. We want to meet new cultures, see famed landmarks with our own eyes and taste the world cuisine. One of the most pleasant ways to explore a new city is just going for a walk. But how to chart a tour route that satisfies everyone? There’s an answer!

En Route is a flip-and-write game in which you create tour routes to the most interesting landmarks of the real-world cities (London, New York City, Hong Kong, Paris, Cairo, and Rio de Janeiro) and the made-up First City packed full of geek references. Every city features basic and specific mechanisms, so all of them play and feel differently.

The game features constant and quite intense player interaction, and players have a fair degree of control and can strategize. It plays fast, dynamic, and makes you constantly think about what your opponents want to do (and sometimes even negotiate so that they play cards that are beneficial to you!).

To begin, choose a city that you want to play in.  You can start with Basic City or choose one of the other six cities.  Each one comes with special rules, and there is a separate rulebook that highlights those rules and setup changes.  Place the round board for your selected city onto the table.  

Create the City deck from the Tourist cards specific to your chosen city, the Global tourist cards and the Repeat cards.  Shuffle this deck and place them in the holder.  Also choose one goal card from each of the three types and place them face up on the table.

Each player receives a player board for the chosen city and draws a hand of 3 cards from the City deck.  The board shows a 6×6 grid of city locations, with roads running in between them.  Some of the locations are colored in – these are landmarks. Players also receive two personal objective cards, from which one is kept and one is returned to the box.

Cards are not flipped randomly — instead, the active player plays one card face up, and two players next to them secretly choose one card each from their hand and place it next to the face up card. Then, the active player reveals the cards, selects one of the two opponent cards and places the other on the bottom of the City deck. After that, all players use coordinates and other information from the two cards left on the table to draw their tourists and routes.  

The two numbers will designate specific which location will be used – the player can choose which order to put the numbers into coordinates.  The tourist shapes shown on the cards are the types of tourists that will be drawn in.  You must choose a location which is still empty. 

Then, if there is a Landmark shown on the card, you will tick a box on the main board for that type of landmark – making it more valuable.   Finally you draw a route, either a segment of 2 sections next to the selected location OR 1 route section anywhere on the map.   If your route touches a cafe (coffee cup icon), circle the cup to show that you have activated its bonus.  If you use that bonus, cross out the icon.

If you are unable to use either set of coordinates on the cards, you can draw one tourist of any type in any empty location and then draw one route segment anywhere on your board.

When the round is over, the cards used in this round are discarded from the game.  The start player moves around the board.  All players who played a card draw up to replenish their hand to three cards.

A game of En Route lasts exactly 10 rounds. At the end of the game, players will have to determine their final route – this must be a single unbranching route.  Erase any unused route sections.  It may cross itself or loop.  Once you have your final route, you can erase any tourists which are not on that route (do not have at least one side of their location on the route).  

Players now calculate their scores:

• Personal Objective cards
• Red tourists: multiply the number of red Landmarks on your route by the number of red tourists on your route
• Blue tourists: multiply the number of blue Landmarks on your route by the number of blue tourists on your route
• Green tourists: multiply the number of green Landmarks on your route by the number of green tourists on your route
• Yellow landmarks – if on your route, score based on what is printed on the landmark
• Gray landmarks – each one on your route score based on its final standing on the main board at the end of the game.
• Visit them all locations – if your city has  visit-them-all locations, score if your route goes through enough of them
• Unused Cafe bonuses – score 2 pts for every unused cafe bonus
• Goals – score the A, B and C goals set out at the beginning of the game

Whoever creates the most satisfying tour route and has the most points is the winner!  Ties broken in favor of the longest final route.

My thoughts on the game

En Route enters a crowded X-and-write genre, but spices things up with a novel way to select the numbers used.  Though it takes a bit more time than rolling dice, it does give a little bit of agency to the players involved in the card selection, and that is a point in the game’s favor (at least for me).

There is a lot to think about when choosing where to play – you want to have the right color tourists in the right spots, and sometimes you just need roads in certain places, and that may drive your decision to use a certain set of coordinates.

You’ll have to approach each city board differently – as each has a unique layout and unique rules that need to be accounted for.  This variety also helps the replayability of the game as you can try out a different city each time you play!

The rules are quirky. Everything is definitely in the rulebook, but the organization is weird for me. Lots of boxes that explain a certain element of the game, but it was hard for me to follow as the information sometimes came at times when I wasn’t expecting them.  That being said, as everything is in the rulebook, it may just take a more careful (or second) reading to get it all in your brain.   Also be sure to check the city book to make sure you understand all the rules for the city that you have chosen!

Overall this game is on the higher end of the complexity scale for X-and-writes.  I would say that figuring out how to place your tourists in the best place is not an obvious thing; and it can also get a bit complicated as you also have to get the route to pass by them in order for them to be included in the scoring.  This is definitely an XAW that I’d save for the game group, while I’ll bring out Wurfel Bingo or Super Lucky Mega Box for family events.

I’m glad that I gave this one a try, and the travel theme (and the multiple boards) give this one a spot in the game collection for now.  The addition of some player agency to the card selection also helps this one feel fresh.

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Justin B. (4 plays): En Route solves the riddle that most of these “blank and write” games get wrong: the level of interaction on display here is much, much stronger than comparable titles. This was my favorite roll-and-write from 2025 and the additional titles in the line (including Innsmouth Travel Guide and Arkham Travel Guide) use a system that is perfect for core hobbyists looking to shake up the formula. Three players is the perfect count; that way, on each turn, each player has a hand in what is possible. The deluxe edition of En Route has so many maps that I might never see them all, with lots of great little variants to continue shaking things up.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

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

Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4gtlocY