Next Station London: Creepy and colorful!

Well, Madge, I'm in a mood to ride the tube, head to Oxfordshire and have a bloody good time!

Ahem… Sorry. It could be that we got carried away, and that we channeled the London spirit of this week's game a little too much… Besides, as these lines appear on the screen, the temperature, foggy, cool, rainy, reminds precisely the image we often have of London. No but? It's well done, life, all the same, huh?

The heart

Next Station London is a so-called 'flip and write' game. The main goal of the game is to build four underground lines under the city of London, maximizing the interchanges, the tourist centers, the crossings of the Thames and the districts of the English capital. To do this, four colored pencils are used: one blue, one pink, one purple and one green. This system is reminiscent (nor without making you shiver with dread) of the famous colored lines of the Montreal metro… Essentially, the player who best optimizes his lines will win the game and will be granted a metro driver's license. London Underground ( Mooh and Bibz are not responsible for any diplomatic incident arising from an attempt to drive an actual London Underground ).

The style

The visual invoice, created by the French illustrator Maxime Morin , is simple, minimalist, but effective and charming. Nothing really overflows the three primary colors, a little green, and of course the eternal black and white. Simple, as I said. Morin's combination of yellow and pink is sometimes a little garish, yes, but nothing that's enough to stop playing it. (However, we wondered if the colors passed the test for people living with color blindness… mmm…)

The course of the game

NS London is simple in appearance: you flip a card (flip), then depending on the symbol present on it (square, triangle, circle, pentagon), you draw a line (write) from one station to another. Simple, right? Mmmm yes. At least in gesture.

Each round each player has a different colored pencil – so after four rounds of play, everyone at the table (2-4 players) will have had a chance to form a subway line in each of the four colors. Until then, still simple. It starts to get complicated when you take into account the construction rules for metro lines: lines can only cross at stations, the same line can't return a second time to the same station, and you always have to continue at one of the two ends of the line on which we are playing during the current round (with one exception, explained below).

 

The majority of cards in the deck display only one symbol. However, there are a few other cards that allow you to "work around" the rules, if you want. Two of these cards display the four symbols of the game, and are therefore considered as jokers, shams, allowing players to bring their line under construction to any nearby station (as long as they respect the other rules ). Finally, a card displays a different symbol from the others: it is the switch card. As with real trains (or metros, in fact), the switch allows you to take an alternative route - you can therefore start a third "end" of the line on that of the current round, which adds to the flexibility of the game. and gives increased possibilities to players. YES, we like the referral card – each of its appearances was accompanied at the table by a gesture or a word of satisfaction. And if a card can make us react like this, imagine if we really took the subway... ( Mooh and Bibz are not responsible for any disappointment incurred if the referral card does not cause other players to experience the same feeling of uncontrollable euphoria, even less if said card were to cause headaches or anxiety. Well what? You never know! )

So what's most likely to happen is that we end up creating an unbreakable maze (this word exists, since it's written right there, and takes fewer letters than writing "unbreakable" , good) in which it will become increasingly difficult to add tunnels for our last two lines. And that's the whole beauty of it! We seek to cover as many districts and tourist centers as possible, to cross the Thames as often as possible, while optimizing interline connections and meeting the objectives set at the start of the game. Pffff. Nothing there!

( If, as an adult, I, Mooh, thought it would be easy – after all, the game is listed as suitable for ages 8 and up – I still ran into surprising complexity. Good , yes, I've won AND lost games, but I'm still amazed at the devious depth of this game, which only lasts about 20-30 minutes. You should see the "kindergarten drawings" that my attempts to London lines brought forth. Ouache. )

If you want to spice up a game a bit, you can add powers, randomly assigned, to each pencil in the game. These can only be used once per round, so adding them makes the game a a little more unpredictable. None of these powers affect other players, though – NS London is effectively a 'multiplayer solitaire' game, where everyone does their little chem man… uh… tube line nanny, yes.

The verdict

We had been sung the praises of Next Station London before it arrived on our table. This singer (or this singer?) was right: the game has an almost immediate charm, due to the simplicity of the actions it requires, and its quite limited number of rules. Its complexity only comes to the player after a few rounds, where he or she begins to emit soft “aaahhhh…” and “hummmm…” pensive, while on the sheet, colored paths are slowly drawn and between mixed.

The easy set-up and the very short playing time make it a perfect warm-up at the start of game night. And it's time to shout LAST STOP!

We learn to discover Flip and Write games (or Roll and write, Draft and write, and others). You may find a Roll and write of our collection on this blog in the near future, by the way… Who knows?

2 to 4 players

25 minutes

8 years +

- Biz and Mooh