Tic Tac Trek

Taking obvious inspiration from the classic children’s game of the pre-digital days, Tic Tac Trek develops the three-in-a-row concept into something slightly more evolved, but still simple enough for kids. Unlike the traditional game, however, it isn’t ‘solved’ game, where perfect play from both sides guarantees a draw.

In the little tin is a bag of Landscape Tiles and Fire pieces for both players: circular bases for one player, cross-shaped bases for the other. Before play begins, two tiles are randomly drawn from the bag and placed next to each other as the start of the play area. Then the game begins and continues with players taking turns to draw further tiles from the bag, and adding them to the play area. You must place adjacent to matching terrain if you can, the exception being the two Lake tiles, which can be placed anywhere.

Each tile has an X on one side and a O on the other. When adding a tile to the growing landscape, you place your own symbol face-up. Beyond the rules above, the game is all about the balance between maximising your own possibilities – and potentially blocking your opponent. Whenever you make a row of three, be it horizontal, vertical or diagonal, you get to place one of your fires on the tile you just placed. Note that the terrain doesn’t have to match, only the symbols. Now the tile with the fire on it is no longer available to be part of any row, but the goal is to get your fires down in the ideal places, and more fire tends to be better than less. As soon as someone places the last tile from the bag, the game is over and points are counted.

The reason more fires isn’t a guaranteed win lies in the scoring. Each fire will score a point for each empty space around it, including diagonals – that is, spaces with no tiles in them. So it’s possible to win with fewer fires in play, and you can indeed strategise to achieve this by looking to play aggressively, doing as much blocking as you can! The player with the most points is the winner.