Designed by: Ref Tom Green
Rail Pass is a real-time game played co-operatively by the players, who win or lose together: how much time you have depends on how many players there are, with more players getting less time. The goal is to get all the cargo to it’s matching-coloured station: green cubes to the green station, blue to the blue station and so on. How it’s done is… kinda nuts!
Every player has a board in front of them that represents their station, with each station a particular colour. You begin with two trains in your station – one big, one small – and a whole bunch of cubes (the cargo) that you need to move. Helpful arrows can be laid out to remind you which way you want to move them: if the blue station is to your right, for instance, you don’t want to be sending blue cubes to your left (ignore this example if you’re only playing with two players!)
Players all play at the same time. The moment the timer starts, you can load cubes onto your trains and pass them to your immediate neighbours, with – and this is a rule – a cry of Toot toot! as you do so. Note you can only load cubes from either end of the cube track, not anywhere you like!
But you’ll be receiving trains too: if you have room, you can slot them into your station and load/unload as necessary. If you don’t, you must hold the other train/s in your hands until space is freed up for them! And there’s no unloading or loading from a train in your hand.
If that wasn’t enough, each train is driven by an engineer. You have three engineers in your colour and can’t send a train anywhere without one. But the engineers are a picky bunch: if they travel further from home than your immediate neighbours, they quit: hopping off the train and abandoning the game! So there’s a regular task of swapping engineers in order to keep the trains moving.
Unloading cubes of your own colour, at least, doesn’t clog up the other cubes: they go at the bottom of your station board, safely out of harm’s way. Players win by delivering all the cubes to their correct destinations before the time is up!
None - you're working as a team.
None!
Well, it's about shifting cargo, and every cube has a very specific destination it needs to reach. The problem is the other cubes are in the way, the trains are going hither and thither and the engineers keep on quitting!
You need to get a kick out of the urgent clock-ticking puzzle that Rail Pass offers to really enjoy lots of repeat plays. That's possibly not the GNG position on it, but it's certainly a lot of a particular type of chaotic fun.
2-6
Players
8+
Years
5-15
Mins
Sam says
It feels like everyone should play Rail Pass at least once in their lives, because it's a unique experience. I'm not sure it's one I'd like to play again and again, because it's chaotic enough to be almost anxiety-inducing! Everyone is talking at the same time, puzzling their best move, yelling Toot Toot and invariably trying to pass you a train when you already have four of them! But on the other hand, it's satisfying when you beat the clock, and the clock is astutely judged to keep Rail Pass from going on longer than it should. It reminded me ever so slightly of Kitchen Rush, which is a similar real-time puzzle, but I prefer Rail Pass for it's siliness and brevity.