Remember Our Trip

Remember Our Trip is not your typical boardgame. Its unique theme, a group of friends reminiscing about their trip abroad, and unusual art style might scare away potential players, who just want to command more armies of fantastical creatures or build yet another farm in the European countryside.

However, this game should be given a fair chance as I found it to be a truly unexpected gem. The objective of the game is to be the one who better remembers the attractions you visited and their locations by recreating them on a map using drafted tiles. Let’s see how it plays.

How To Play

For setup each player receives a board where they’ll place their tiles and a player aid. A common map board is placed at the center of the board, that will be used by all players to score and to collectively build the final map. By encouraging all players to place their own board adjacent to the common map board, the game removes the possibility of each player closing down on their own little board and forces people to interact, look at other players are doing, and seeing the central map evolve.

The game is rather quick, lasting only for twelve rounds. On each round one of the twelve memory cards will be drawn, informing how many tiles will be drawn for the draft and what positions they might be placed in after being drafted. Tiles are selected in groups of two or three (there are four groups in a three or four player game, only three groups to choose from in a two-player game) depending on the card and must be placed on your board according to one of the white squares present in the card in relation to any other tile you place on the same round.

One major difference from the usual tile laying fare is that you can’t mirror or rotate the shape presented in the card. You may choose not to place a tile, or to replace a previously placed tile, at a cost to your endgame scoring. After placing the tiles, if you have enough tiles of the same type in the correct shape you may confirm a location. You do this by flipping the tiles, which you’ll no longer be able to replace but receive points based on the type and size of the building you completed. Furthermore, if the area of the building on the central map is free you get to place that building on it, thus confirming it was in fact there, which will score you even more points by giving a matching bonus.

It’s important to note that you don’t need to be the one to place the building on the common board to get the matching bonus. If a building previously placed by another player matches the location of a building you just confirmed, you get that matching bonus. And this is where the game really shines. It encourages people to make similar maps while at the same time giving them opportunities to block another player’s big scoring buildings.

It can be played both as a chill relaxing family game, where you’re remaking the map of the city you visited, sharing memories of that restaurant next to the park, or the hotel by the river or it can be a really mean game where you’re constantly lambasting your opponent because how can someone think the Ferris wheel was right next to the sea when the entire area was clearly covered by a restaurant?

Another way the game tries to have similar maps across the boards is by having four picture locations, places where it’s confirmed by a picture that it was in fact a restaurant or shop or hotel. By placing the correct tile on top of these spots you get points at the end of the game. Ignore them and you risk losing points instead. There’s also an objective card selected at random at the beginning of the game. These range from extremely simple, like having three confirmed parks to get 6 points, to more intricate, like each confirmed shop tile orthogonally adjacent to a park nets you 1 point. It’s not a complex game but it has enough depth to be a filler that forces you to think and plan ahead.

But How Do You Play It?

I found the most important thing in Remember Our Trip to be timing. The start player marker rotates every turn and with it the possibility to both choose tiles and to be the first player to place them, getting a chance to confirm them. You don’t always want to confirm buildings immediately because you might want to make them bigger or place a new tile and get a better spot for them on the central map. But with waiting for a better payoff always comes risk.

Is any other player in a position to block you? Will they play before you on the next turn? Do they want to block you, or will they use the building you place to score some points of their own? Will you get the tiles you need? All this races through your mind as you choose and place the tiles, which is easier said than done. That little rule about not being able to rotate or mirror the shapes in the cards? Yeah, that makes things a lot harder than they look.

Soon you’ll find yourself with a board half full of incomplete buildings desperate to complete that hotel, before someone remembers there was a park right where the hotel was supposed to be, and the shape you get means you might have to sacrifice one or two tiles to complete it. Or worse, that you can’t complete it, and have to wait another turn hoping no one decides to ruin your plans.

As mentioned before the game can be played in a more relaxing manner where everyone cooperatively builds the city as they remember and there lies one of the greatest strengths of the game and it’s Achille’s heel. It can be played with anyone but if you’re not careful about managing the expectations of all players one of them might end up having a bad time. Nothing worse than sitting down to slowly build a map with friends and end up having all your buildings cut off by that one other guy who can’t tone it down. Or be trying hard to win and getting the stink eye from everyone at the table, just because you confirmed a building they didn’t like. After all the purpose of a boardgame is winning. Right?

Final Thoughts

Remember Our Trip is a thinky filler with a unique theme and art direction, that might put some people off at first, but it’s a really enjoyable game and one you can get a good mileage from. Watching your opponent’s hand overing over that set of tiles you desperately need when it’s their turn to draft, the painful wait as they decide where to place that tile to finish their building all and the many decisions and risks you take along the way all make for an amazing experience inside such a small box with a relatively low barrier to entry and short playing time. It’s a game everyone should try at least once, especially if you enjoy other tile drafters such as Azul or Calico.