1000 Places to See Before You Die Game

1000 Places to See Before You Die Game

by Amanda Nettgen

(USA)

Click to buy 1000 Places to See Before You Die Game from Amazon!Click to buy 1000 Places to See Before You Die Game from Amazon!The Game:
1000 Places to See Before You Die Game
Board game manufacturer:
University Games
Number of players:
2-6
Ages:
7+

Quick verdict

1000 Places to See Before You Die is a geography game based on the best-selling guidebook of the same title. It features a giant map of the world that you will pretend to travel around.

The game and gameplay

I received this game for my birthday last year from my husband because he knows I like to travel. We’ve played it a total of three times – that’s how boring the game concept is.

Click here to Put Your Foot Down: submit your OWN Footprint Rating and leave comments for this game!You start by finding an area big enough to lay out the game’s replica of our known world. Five “postcards” are dealt to each player and are placed picture-side up in their stack. The remaining cards go in a designated pile on the board. Everyone is issued their own airplane (never mind if you can fly or not) and parks theirs at the dot on the map closest to their real hometown.

Whoever was born farthest west plays first. On their turn, a “Traveler” can either roll the die or choose another destination card. If they opt to fly somewhere, they move one dot for each dot displayed on the die, with shortcuts in Asia back to the United States.

The goal is to travel to all of the locales listed on their destination cards that satisfy zone visitation requirements. Places on the map are divided into A, B, C, D, and E, and you need to have acquired a postcard and memory of actually stopping there for each of the five lettered areas to win.

Upon reaching one of the places pictured on a player’s postcards, the card is flipped or distinguished in some other way as being completed. Another turn is granted, giving the player a chance to grab a new postcard, as most likely players will not have a perfect alphabet soup of postcards when they start.

There are a variety of Movement Cards, like Bring A Friend and Fly Free, but these don’t spice the game up any. In the former you playfully hijack your friend’s plane and move it to where you are, while in the latter you have a free pass to fly wherever instantaneously (must have upgraded to a fighter jet).

You win when you have a collection of valid postcards from the first five letters of the alphabet. Your final objective is to return to your hometown because, you know, there’s no place like it.

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Pros and cons

1000 Places to See Before You Die Game. Click to buy from Amazon!Click to buy 1000 Places to See Before You Die Game from Amazon!The 1,000 Places to See Before You Die Game is – in my husband’s words – not really a game. It’s more like wasting half an hour being ambushed by unexciting travel brochures. How dare the back of the box claim that this game is like taking your family on a trip around the world without even having to leave your den.

As a person who’s traveled extensively, I recommend that if you desire but can’t afford to travel to faraway lands right now, watch the Travel channel, Google countries online… anything but play this game. It can take many turns to get to certain spots with this game, and for what purpose?

I suppose this game would be an okay choice as an educational tool only. But even then kids will find it dull, and you’ll lose a few teacher points but tricking them into thinking they’re getting to play a fun game.

The pictures on the postcards are decent, and if you make the mistake of buying this game, you can donate the game board map to one of your kid’s school projects. It’s also a good game to play if you suffer from insomnia.

The verdict

Stay away! Some adjectives to describe the 1,000 Places to See Before You Die Game include uninteresting, monotonous and mostly futile.

Boardgame Beast gives 1000 Places to See Before You Die Game just ONE footprint out of five. Click here to leave comments and submit your OWN score for this game!

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