a_way

• Designers:  Clément Bongibault, Louis Fievre, Benjamin Niess, Hugo Socié 
• Publisher: Blue Orange
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 10+
• Time: 10-30 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

In a_way, players take part in the legendary spaceship race of the Quazarys galaxy. Each pilot must reach their own base — which is also an opponent’s starting point. The race track is made of solar paths filled with stations, directional arrows, and strange space phenomena, creating a constantly shifting cosmic circuit where clever navigation matters as much as speed.

On your turn, you combine movement and card play to advance your ship. Players move from station to station, respecting one-way routes and mandatory checkpoints, while avoiding landing on the same station as an opponent. Cards drawn from a shared deck allow players to manipulate the board, trigger special effects, teleport through vortices, or disrupt rivals. You may play single cards or powerful combos from the same faction, discard cards to cycle your hand, and gain an extra movement each turn for well-timed bursts of speed.

Positioning and timing are key: you can leap over opposing ships if conditions are right, anticipate blocked paths, and adapt as the layout changes. The game ends immediately when a player reaches the opposing base (or the base directly across from their own in games with three or four players).

a_way is a fast, tactical race where clever card play and sharp movement decisions decide who crosses enemy territory first.

To set up, place the solar cards in a row or cross (player count dependent) on the table; with a base at each line end.  Each player’s ship is placed on the base fully opposite their goal Station card.  Each player gets a hand of 5 cards.  One card is flipped up from the deck to start the discard pile. Each turn has three phases: Action, Movement, Drawing cards.

In the action phase, the player has three options:

• Move the ship – moving along paths on the card to the next station on the line, always following the direction of any arrows on the path.  If you would land on a space with another ship, keep going to the next free station
• Play cards – play one or more cards of the same faction.  This can allow you to play new cards to the board or action cards.  
• Discard cards – discard 1 to 3 cards

In the second phase, you may optionally move you ship by 1 station.  Finally, in the final phase, draw cards until your hand is back up to 5 cards. 

The game end is triggered when a player’s ship reaches their home base.  The current round is completed until all players have had the same number of turns.  The winner is the last player who reached their home base in the final round.

My thoughts on the game

a_way is a really quick puzzle game – some games being as few as 3 turns so far!    The game comes in an impressively small box that contains the cards and the 5 ships.   When the game starts, you are only 5 cards away from the goal – but this is a minimum of ten stations away, and it’s likely you can’t even get there from here due to the one-way paths on the solar cards.

The game is just a race to put down good cards in useful places – or hopefully benefit from the cards placed by your opponent(s).  The game doesn’t last very long – so there really is no long term planning going on… It’s look at the cards in your hand, figure out what to play or maybe just move twice, and repeat.  The action cards can let you rotate cards, exchange cards or maybe even move an opponent’s ship (which can be especially dastardly if you move them the wrong way across a 1-way arrow). 

In the end, you have to hope that you’ve drawn the right cards in to your hand at the time that you need them.  This is likely why one of the options is to discard cards in lieu of movement in order to try to draw better.

The game is definitely controlled chaos as the map is constantly in flux, and there are a few action cards that can shake things up.  Further, if someone gets a lucky draw and gets both of the portal cards, that’s been pretty much a guaranteed win in our experience.  For a short filler, it’s a fun trifle of a game.  Lots of luck, but for a ten minute game, it is what it is.  The game has the added bonus (for me) that a 2p game should be able to fit on an airplane tray table – and that was another tick in the plus column for this game.

Until your next appointment,

The Gaming Doctor