Mirror, Signal… RAM THEM OFF THE ROAD! Joyride: Survival of The Fastest
Racing games. Once upon a time, these were a staple of the console and computer gamer’s diet. And there was so much variety – demolition derbies, death races, F1 racing, street racing, kart racing, hover-killship racing – high octane action with speeds so fast that the screen blurred and a soundtrack to get the heart pumping.
Then, it all got… tame. Sure, racing games were always a bit samey, but the developers just stopped trying to be sensational and just got… realistic. Confession time: I never liked Gran Turismo - a game where you have to pass an exam to play it is not my idea of fun. For me, there was a peak in racing games, and that peak, or plateau, was between Supercars 2 on the Amiga and Burnout 4 on the PlayStation 2. After that… everything felt like a steady decline. Personally. Saving Mario Kart.
Supercars 2, Stunt Car Racer, Ironman Stewart’s Off-Road Challenge, Micro Machines, Rollcage 1 & 2, Wipeout & Wipeout 2097, Burnout 3 and 4 – why were these games so good? Two words: utter chaos. Cars would be blown off the road, walls would be clipped that would turn your high-performance machine into a high-performance chunk of burning wreckage, cars would explode, buildings would explode, EVERYTHING WOULD EXPLODE – and The Prodigy or Fallout Boy would be blasting out over the carnage. So, so cathartic; so, so good.
Racing board games were never as numerous as their on-screen counterparts, but followed a similar vein, only… there was never as much chaos. Car Wars gave you plenty of variety, but those little cardboard chits were a bit… underwhelming; Dark Future looked great, but was a bit rule- and condition-heavy – kinda robbed it of any spontaneity or, to be honest, speed – you need that in a racing game, really. Thunder Road was much more fun, so much so that it made a comeback recently, with push off mechanic that gave it real urgency, but was a bit linear. So now we have games like Rallyman GT, pushing the dice envelope, and Heat: Peddle to the Metal, forcing you to make crunchy card decisions, and, yes, Thunder Road again (I should also mention the likes of Downforce and Formula D, or even PitchCar, but then we'd never get to the actual crux of the review) and yes, they are all good games, great games even… but they still feel a bit ‘stick to the track’, even when you spin off or flip out. I want something a bit more… open? And dare I say it… Chaotic? Well, it appears that the same company who make my favourite comic (2000AD, home of Judge Dredd for the uninitiated), Rebellion, may have answered my pleas – LET THE MADNESS… BEGIN!
Scrumping For Cars
Joyride is a two- to four-player game from new designers Duncan Molloy and Pete Ward, with art from Pye Parr (also new) set in a near-future dystopia where [insert suitably dystopian set-up here] and now one of the most fun and popular things that you can do without completely modding your body out as a cyber-walrus is racing around various tracks in numerous vehicles, smacking the heck out of each other and fighting to be the first across the line. Sounds fun? Sounds fun.
Each player gets a car (natch), a player board, a gear stick, five dice (each car has a different colour, so it's easy to work out who gets what) and three special actions - these can either be the same for each player if you want to keep things straightforward, or specific to the car; different cars have different strengths and weaknesses, for instance, the Four Wheel
Drive is great for going in one direction quickly at the expense of slowing down, whilst the Hot Rod is great for going very quick at the expense of the engine working anymore.
The idea of Joyride is simple: get your car through a number of checkpoints, cross the line (in any direction), then repeat for as many laps as are required. The base game comes with a double-sided board divided into hexagons over suitably post-apocalyptic scenes, and comes with a bunch of obstacle pieces to modify the tracks, and start/finish line and checkpoint markers to set the course (the box includes a booklet of possible track set ups, but you are welcome and encouraged to make your own). There are also a big stack of Drop Box tokens that can be obtained by either driving over them or by crossing checkpoints. More on those later.
Turn order is determined at random, though later it will be determined by who is in the highest gear, and the last player chooses where they start on the line (though the board is substantial, shall we say, the tracks rarely get broader than four hexes wide, hence the max player count). Each player puts their gear stick on second gear and rolls two dice. They move their car forward that many hexes in a straight line and put the two dice as rolled on their rear view mirror. Buckle up, kiddo, it's race time!
The Last of The V8s… Sorry, D6s
Each player takes their turn in order, and each turn is divided into five phases: lock and move, gear change, roll, move and gather yer dice. It sounds pretty elaborate, and for the first turn it feels it, but it turns out to be fairly intuitive by the second or third round. It's pretty darned fast too.
Phase one, lock and move, allows you to lock up to four (at the moment) dice from your rear view mirror and move that number of spaces - this is why you keep the dice values over from your previous turn; it's a momentum thing. Some cars have special abilities that will allow you or force you to change these values, but mostly you're stuck with what you’ve got. You can also turn one hex to the left or right in front of your car at the start of the move - special abilities allow you to turn more significantly, but otherwise you're gonna have to follow the laws o' physics, cap'n.
Phase two allows you to either go up or down a gear - this allows you to either gain or forces you to discard dice. Again, special abilities allow you to go up more than one gear at a time, but every car has the ability to engine break and drop two gears, which, as the name suggests, will damage your car. Yeah, damage…
In phase three you ROLL THE DICE… at least the ones you have on your rear view mirror, if you have any left or have just gained them.
Phase four is your second opportunity to move, but if you steered in phase one… that wall is coming up pretty quick, shame you can't steer again. Unless you can use a special ability, or you are in second gear and going at a more sensible speed. Ha. Crunch. Damage.
Finally, phase five lets you take all the dice you have (or have left) and put them on your rear view mirror, ready for next round. I'm sure the grinding/scraping noise coming from the engine is nothing to worry about…
Rubbing Is Racing
Racing is not usually considered a contact sport, but this is near-future dystopian racing, so better sharpen up those wheel-spikes! Fortunately, collisions, weapons and damage are kept simple but fun here - wading through pages of effect tables may be more authentic, but kinda spoils the moment, you dig?
Collisions can be with other cars, scenery or… both. If you hit another car, it will either be into the side, the rear or head-on. In a sideswipe, you simply move the part of the car you hit the required number of hexes until it is out of the way or obstructed by scenery or another car, in which case you get a pile-up. If you hit another car in the rear, you shunt it in the direction that you are moving, only your remaining movement is halved (rounding up, of course). If you hit a car head-on, the driver of that car decides whether it is going to be a smash for both cars or a shunt, depending on which works best for them.
If you hit scenery, pile-up or smash, you will take damage. With a smash or scenery collision, you also drop down to gear zero - lose all dice and take your gear stick off the gears - you will have to start in first gear, which also allows you to reverse, which might be needed if your car is embedded in the central reservation - and your turn ends. If it's a pile-up, all cars involved drop one gear, lose a dice, and the current player ends their turn. Which leaves us with the damage thing.
In Joyride, damage is inevitable but not terminal - no matter how much damage you take, your car will still be able to keep moving until the end of the game. When you take damage, though, you have to place a damage counter on your player board. Your player board is where you lock dice, change gear and place any weapons you pick up, and most of these have dotted lines around them. These are where you are going to have to put the damage counters, and they will stay there for the rest of the game. So, it's decision time - do you sacrifice weapons for speed, or speed for momentum? Choices, choices, but is this a Drop Box I see before me?
Drop Boxes mean weapons; and weapons mean fun. Missile get thrown out in front of you and EXPLODE; mines get dropped behind you and EXPLODE. Airstrikes are played at the beginning of the round to one hex and at the end of the round… yes, you guessed it - they EXPLODE! Oil slicks make the player that hits them steer as soon as they move out of them (this is not always a bad thing - I've won at least once using an oil slick on the finish line). Finally, there is nitro, which allows you to roll an extra BIG dice and that can add up to four to your move… or if you roll the lightning symbol, you will add nothing but a damage counter, as your engine EXPLODES!
And that's Joyride. Sounds fun? It IS fun - but there's more in the tank…
Differentiation Ain't Just A Gear Thing…
Joyride is a very colourful, very vibrant, very… decorated game. Each player board, each car is full of colour and design… but for some it could be too busy. So the designers have done something which I have not really seen before.
They have offered a toned-down version of most of the game.
The boards themselves still feature a lot of artwork, but the roads and boundaries themselves are clearly defined. The player boards, wooden cards and turn order tracker all have high artwork sides and high contrast sides. High contrast means that the spaces that do things on the player board are clearly marked and not ‘muddled’ with unnecessary artwork; the cars have a simple icon on them that can be linked to the player board; the turn order tracker has clearly marked circles where the order markers go (which also have high artwork/high contrast sides). Clear and concise.
The rule book also has an option for the person doing the teach – throughout both rulebooks (one for base rules, one for cars and tracks), it features icons for rules that can be omitted if it is too much for your player group, adding that the teacher will know their player group better than the designers do, so… trim as necessary.
I don’t think I’ve seen such consideration for differentiation in a game before, and I really hope this is the shape of things to come.
I’m A Driver… I’m A Winner… Things Are Gonna Change Around Here – I Can Feel It…
I really could have ended this review about two lines ago, but I just wanted to add how much I LOVE this game! It looks great, vibrant and colourful, it plays really well and really fast, and it is one of the most considerate productions ever. I’ve talked about the high contrast/reduced rule set above, but as well as that, all the parts are either cardboard, paper or wood (it still has cellophane wrapping and some seal-up baggies inside, but apart from that…) If I was to be critical at all, I would say that it is quite large (there is a smaller version coming out soon), I wouldn’t mind having an extra car (though there are two very reasonably priced extra car expansions) and I would have liked to have more than four players… but these seem quite petty in the face of what is a fantastically fun and outrageously chaotic game.
If this is what Rebellion is capable of… roll on the next game! Might I suggest that you have quite the cast of characters and storylines in 2000AD to choose from for your next release?