Let´s Make a Bus Route: The Dice Game

As you might expect of this name, in Let’s Make a Bus Route (and it’s non-dice predecessor, that hosts up to four players) players are making bus routes. Or more accurately, perhaps, they are travelling bus routes, in the style of well-meaning and community-minded, but mildly unhinged bus-driving psychopaths. At the start of the game, no routes exist! The city lies before you like an empty grid of passengers waiting to be serviced, and destinations they want to get to. Delivering passengers to these places is where success lies. But like all the best bus routes, common sense comes secondary to the geometric desires of these bonkers route planners…

Players each have a personal board where they mark off passengers and destinations, and you take turns rolling the six dice, which represent different types of passenger plus the No Entry sign – more on that shortly. The dice-rolling player takes three of the results – their choice – and crosses off these passengers on their board. The passengers will score either at the end of the game (students/OAPs/families) or when the bus route reaches various destinations (workers/tourists). How do you determine your route? Well, every time you’re the non-dice-rolling player you choose one of the leftover dice for yourself: each face of the die also represents a section of route that your draw onto the shared city board – which is how you know x passengers have reached y destinations. There are traffic penalties (-minus points) if you share a road or go through a congested area, and you can take ‘voluntary’ penalties by amending the assigned route by adding or ignoring a turn in it. If you end your movement on a traffic light, you get to spring another space further on.

Players continue taking turns to roll and collect passengers/extend their route. After 12 rounds taking turns to roll/assign, the game ends – though beware! Your route options are finite and you may find your bus unable to move in the last round or two – and players tally scores. One more thing to mention: that No Entry face on the dice. For the route-drawing player, it’s just another route option. For the dice-rolling player, they can help give you extra flex in your options, by conjuring up free dice rerolls and/or the ability to choose a die side (only once per game). It all looks pretty nuts, and sounds pretty nuts, but after a game or two it makes it’s own crazy sense, and plays nice and quickly too.

At time of writing, (sadly!) unavailable in the UK. The check availability link (top right) offers links to the very similar big brother game that plays up to four