TRAILS – First Impressions
Review copy provided by the publisher
Henry Audubon is back and this time he’s bringing more idyllic vistas of lands not far from our reach.
For 2-4 players, TRAILS is a game that plays in about 30 minutes and encourages players to appreciate the National Park Service and all of the beautiful places in the United States. More than that, the publisher—Keymaster Games—donates a portion of each game sale to the organization.
Betwixt the customer and the publisher, however, lies the game and in it, players will hike back and forth along the Trail. It’s a rhythmic slide to and fro, with natural resources, Instagram-worthy pictures, and maybe even a wild bear (a wooden one, at least).
If you’re familiar with PARKS, you will immediately notice the correlation, but this is its own bear. A small bear, yet a bear nonetheless. It’s like a cub. A cub-like game, that fits in very small places but will still be handled with fondness.
Without further ado, let’s see what TRAILS does and if it’s worth your time!
What It Does
Traipse down the trail. Pick up things along the way. Earn badges for what you pick up like Scavenger’s Scouts. Take pretty photos (hopefully with some birds in them). And then enjoy the tranquil progression of Mother Nature as the Sun gently dips down and touches each part of the trail with a dusky finger before moving on and leave a wake of dark velvet sky and twinkling stars over the once sun-kissed land.
Whoever takes the best photos and earns the most badges and gets the most points will be the winner.
It’s a lackadaisical trek through trees and a hunt for the hottest Instagram spots in the U.S. National Parks.
You can see the DNA of PARKS here, but it’s mostly it’s own thing, packaged in a small box so that it can fit in your backpack. Because what this game really wants you to do is go visit the places you see on the trail, maybe take this game with you, and enjoy being outdoors.
TRAILS is the little sister to its wildly-popular bigger sibling, but it’s got a different purpose. It wants to kick open wide the door into the gaming hobby and make admission more welcoming for anyone with a sunny disposition.
How It Does It
TRAILS focuses on two mechanics and streamlines them for players.
The immediate focus is resource management as players move to trail sites and collect rocks, acorns, and leave. There is a meditative back-and-forth to the game as players reach the trail’s end and turn around to go back to the trailhead as the sun gradually sets on the different sites. At either end of the trail, players will turn in resources for badges, which always reward you with points but sometimes also grant bonus actions.
That’s the short-term game. The long-term game involves a small amount of set collection as players hunt for photos with birds on them and badges with category scoring. Each of these small pieces adds up to an endgame scoring phase with an element of surprise for players who haven’t been mentally tabulating what their opponents were claiming.
A few small mechanisms are at play in the rest of the game to create a thematic experience.
The sun starts at the trail’s end and gradually moves backward toward the trailhead, “setting” on different sites and reversing the trail sites from day to night and increasing the reward of those locations. It makes the second half of the game speed up in resource collection and badge acquisition.
A roving bear provides additional resources and actions to players that seek it out when it’s on the trail. Rolling the wildlife die can offer a meatier turn than normal.
And then hiker movement can be augmented with the use of a canteen, which replenishes every time hikers make it back to the trailhead.
So, a few tweaks to give it some character and personality, but overall a more diluted and approachable interpretation of the ideas that gave PARKS so much vibrancy and appeal.
Why You Might Like It
TRAILS takes the spirit of PARKS—beautiful illustrations, peaceful gameplay, accessible experience—and simplifies the design in order to appeal to an even wider audience. PARKS may be accessible to many in the hobby, but TRAILS can function as a true gateway game for people who don’t play typically.
The small-box game can be carried easily when traveling, whether to a friend’s house or on vacation, so that the experience can be enjoyed no matter where you are.
Why You Might Not
For players that felt PARKS was just light enough then this new title might be too sparse an experience to merit adding to the collection.
Without the Park cards and other variable mechanisms that made PARKS have some meat on its bones, the replayability of TRAILS will be greatly reduced from other games that you might normally play.
Final Thoughts
To me, TRAILS does exactly what it intended to, which was to use the appeal and success of PARKS and leverage that into a more accessible game that could be a mass-market retail option for people new to gaming entirely or for those in search of small-box games that can be taught and played with just about anybody, hobbyist or not.
As someone who tries to keep my collection from overflowing the shelves and closets of my house, I think that PARKS will be enough for me. I don’t need this particular iteration from Keymaster Games, but I’m happy that it will be on the shelves at big-box stores and at local game stores to catch the eye of somebody who may have previously walked past the aisle.
However, for small-box gamers, for avid travelers, for people trying to bring family members and friends into the hobby, and for people who just love beautiful depictions of the U.S. National Parks, TRAILS could be a winner for you. It’s light, it’s easy, and it represents the beginning steps of several mechanics that are popular in the board gaming space.
You could call it PARKS-lite, but it’s really a step toward broadening the reach of the tabletop community by allowing more people to sit down at the table.
It won’t be for everyone. It likely won’t win over people who didn’t care for PARKS—which is crazy by the way because that is a gorgeous, excellent game! But it will win over many fans likely and it will give us all more people willing to try a board game, which is a win in my book.
If you want to check out TRAILS, you can visit Keymaster Games or read what the community thinks on BoardGameGeek.
Did you like PARKS? Do you want to introduce more people to the hobby with beautiful artwork and simple gameplay? TRAILS might be something to check out.
Let us know in the comments and give a recommendation for other games of which to share our first impressions.