Horrible Guild Railroad Ink: Deep Blue Edition Board Game for 1-6 Players, 30-45 Minute Playing Time, Ages 8 and Up

Lovely little roll-n-write game; my favourite of the 4 iterations of Railroad Ink. The design is top notch, it oozes quality & I love the cool watery blues of this edition. The whole game is a work of art. My only slight niggle is I feel the boards are a tad small. I have unsteady hands & find it a bit too easy to accidentally wipe marks off the board (it's wipe off pens). Yes, it's a bijou portable box, but I'd prefer it ever so slightly larger. We play as a couple & this is 2 player solitaire, roll the dice, construct your routes (within the rules/constraints) & compare scores at the end. We have loads of interactive games, so this is not an issue for us. It's quite a chilled game all in all. There are 2 small expansions (River & Lake) in this box, which are optional. My drawing abilities are pretty rudimentary but even I can manage a decent railroad map. Recommended.

I think this is a great small box game and once you've figured out the scoring it's easy to teach others too.

Great game, we play it all the time and take it with for coffee dates

Love this game- it can be as competitive as you like, but it's always chill.

I picked this up in early January and I've found it to be the perfect mindfulness game to get me through the stress of lockdown. I've yet to play it with other people, I've just been working on it as a single player game. But it's wonderfully relaxing and intuitive, making your mind shift into gear as you plot out the perfect route. Essentially you have a map and a dry board marker and a set of four dice (or six if you add the two expansion dice). You roll the dice and then you have to draw the routes on the dice onto your map, hoping they will connect and not block each other. The rules are a little tricky initially, my first game I messed up, but once you have a hang of rule placement it's a great 15 minute burst of relaxation in a beautifully compact box.

We learned this game from the rulebook in ~5min at a shop's demo library after being intrigued by Shut Up and Sit Down's video review. Absolutely love how easy it is to play/teach, simultaneous turns for faster gameplay, and the way you go mad as you're driven to be ever more optimal game after game. My husband and I tend to play 2-3 games of this most nights since we got it. The Lakes expansion gives much higher scores and flexibility, which inspires more risks and exciting pay-offs if it works out! The Rivers expansion is much closer to the base game and is fine, but doesn't really add much oompf. Absolutely recommend this game. It works well with seasoned board gamers and Muggles alike due to its accessibility coupled with opportunities for high risk and varied strategies.