Trekking THe WOrld
About
2-5 Players | 30-60 minutes
Category: Educational, Environmental, Travel
Mechanisms: Card Drafting, Contracts, Hand Management, Point to Point Movement, Set Collection
Trekking the World, designed by Charlie Bink and published by Underdog Games, has players competing to be the ultimate globe trotter by racing to visit world-renowned locations and collecting rare souvenirs along the way. During the game, players will be managing hands of Trek cards. Trek cards are multi-purpose, they can be used for player movement, touring destinations, or to use the special ability on a journey card. Ending movement on a space collects any souvenir cube there. A balance of collecting both sets of souvenirs and the most of each souvenir type is needed to gain maximum points. Efficient use of cards and figuring out what goals to pursue is key to victory.
The game spotlights 48 real-world destinations, each beautifully illustrated and accompanied with educational passages to inspire your next getaway.
SERVICES PROVIDED
Game Development
Content Design
PROJECT OVERVIEW
I was a co-developer on this project along with John Brieger (Brieger Creative). We worked together in a variety of areas to streamline and fine-tune the game, revise the scoring system, balance the destination cards, revise and create new journey cards, and draft/edit much of the initial rulebook text.
The original draft of the game was pretty solid when it was delivered to the development team. The biggest change was the scoring system which my co-developer largely tackled. After the very first play we both realized that there were far too many scoring steps at the end of the game to track and calculate. By consolidating these and changing some to during game scoring, things were far easier to manage and scoring was quick to process. At the same time, the scoring system was made more engaging by adding a set collection element. I did a lot of work creating additional journey cards, including many in the extra powerful All Who Wonder - The Lost Journey Cards Kickstarter exclusive mini-expansion.
Otherwise, most of my work was spread among the little details. Things like starting hand size, how to orient draw piles, whether or not to allow blocking of other players, and exploring other tweaks on gameplay are small alone, but in aggregrate make a massive difference.
Project Highlight: Theming THE ABSTRACT
At its basic level, Trekking the World is a fairly abstract game. Players are collecting different color cubes and exchanging suits of cards to gain points - which is rather boring especially for the family audience the game is targeting. My co-developer and I set out to add additional theming to the draft game provided to really immerse players in the world traveling theme and make understanding the game easier by making the abstract more relatable to real life.
Souvenir cubes originally just had colors: yellow, blue, red, and white. We assigned category names to these colors: Crafts, Figurines, Clothing, and Postcards. With the newly created scoring system, players were placing these souvenirs on a grid instead of just in front of them as previously. This grid became your suitcase, which made a lot of sense to players. Where else would a traveler store things?
Journey cards (renamed from the original Special cards), were given names to be related to the travel theme - such as Exchange Rate and Hop, Skip, and a Jump. Names were also made to match the ability of each card. For example, A Bumpy Ride moves one souvenier cube in your suitcase to another row, invoking the image of your suitcase shifting contents around during your travels.
Praise For TREKKING THE WORLD
4.7 Stars from 2900+ ratings on Amazon. Reached a peak of #4 Best Seller for Board Games category.
“Trekking the World’s beautiful production & streamlined rule-set offers great depth & is my favorite in the Trekking series of games.” - Dan King, GameboyGeek
“This is one of our new favorite gateway games. Easy rules, but loads of gameplay in a short time! We loved it!” - Board Game Ramblings
Winner, "Mensa Select", 2023