You'll love the Ticket to Ride online board game

Game:
Ticket to Ride Online
Board game manufacturer:
Days of Wonder
Number of players:
2-5

Quick Verdict

This online board game is a faithful conversion of the original. Perhaps the only slight disappointment with Ticket to Ride online is not being able to upgrade from guest status without buying the board game itself, but that's very smart marketing. Kudos to Days of Wonder for this excellent effort.

The Ticket to Ride Online board game is a superb experience. Fans of the original will be attracted by the faithful rendition and the ability to play solo, while new recruits signing in as guests have been won over and have become new customers for Days of Wonder. Everyone's a winner.

We'll be reviewing the original board game in the near future. For now, we'll keep the overview brief, as the site has tutorials and even a PDF rulebook.

The game

The Ticket to Ride Online board game follows the original's setting of America, during the industrial revolution.

Each player draws objective cards at the beginning, which set cities they should attempt to connect: for example, Montreal to Vancouver. These long routes are completed by connecting the cities in-between. The various cities are linked by lines of coloured squares.

To attempt a connection, players draw cards from one of five face-up options, or blindly from the deck. Locomotives count as jokers and can represent any colour. To link two cities with a green track, for example, a player would need the correct number of green wagons, or one less wagon and a loco. If he can't claim a track, the player can draw more wagon cards or new objective cards.

The challenge and strategy elements come from the scarcity of routes. Obviously, if somebody connects two cities you 'need' to complete an objective, you're going to have to detour round to finish your goal.

Points are scored by making longer connections (the more wagons needed, the higher the score) and by achieving the original objectives. Any failed objectives count against you!

And that's the essence of Ticket to Ride.

Online board game: Pros and cons

Ticket to Ride Online is a solid, fun gaming experience and a great conversion of the original. The graphics look a bit basic by most computer game standards, but are a nice interpretation of the original board and pieces.

The server is pretty busy with players during peak gaming hours. While it's a good idea from a marketing perspective to only let people with the original board game become proper players, with histories and stats, it's a shame that there's no other way to become a 'real' online player (paying a membership fee, for example).

Not everybody is able to find enough people to play a boardgame with, which is the point of online board games. Unless you have a boxed version, you're going to be a guest.

And of course the old problems with online gaming persists. Players tend to get bored and ruin the game by leaving early (to be replaced with a bot) or are otherwise anti-social. It might be a good idea to have guest-only games to avoid this unfortunate drawback.

You'd better not be too slow or be in doubt about the rules, because newbies tend to get a bit of a rough ride from more experienced players in Ticket to Ride Online.

Board game playing on the Internet is still a developing market, but this experience won't disappoint you. Once you're on top of things, you'll really have fun here.

Whether or not it makes you go and buy the original will depend on you, but I was certainly intrigued by the online version of the game and wanted to find out more. From that point of view, Days of Wonder has been successful with Ticket to Ride Online.

The verdict

Fairly simple to pick up and fun to play, you'll enjoy the Ticket to Ride Online board game. Perhaps it will make you buy the original, if only to upgrade your guest status...

Boardgame Beast gives Ticket to Ride four virtual footprints out of five.