The Road is live (Hit The Road and don't you come back)
Update: The Road has launched on Kickstarter, and the campaign will run for 25 days. The game is offered in either English or French, and the first 1500 backers will be able to receive it sooner than the rest.
Our preview post below was published on January 7.
The Road is a solitaire post-apocalyptic card game in which you are trying to survive 6 days on the road until you reach your destination. It will launch on Kickstarter on January 11.
The game comes with six different card decks: the Territory deck, the Road deck, the Encounter deck, the Findings deck, the Trade deck, and the Fatality deck. You start with the stats on your player board -life, energy, and morale- set to the maximum. Two cards from the Territory deck are revealed, and you're good to go. Each Territory card shows the number of Road cards you have to overcome in order to reach that territory. You choose the one you wish to try, and draw that number of Road cards from the deck.
As soon as you turn over the first Road card, you have 3 possible options depending on how you choose to act on the location shown: either pass through it, bypass it by going around it, or turn around and go back to search for another road. Each option comes with different consequences. Passing through a location will often lead to an Encounter. The Encounter will either be an attack, or a trade, or some other interaction, determined by the symbols you see on the next card in the Encounter deck. Some of the Road cards will give you the chance to acquire Findings: useful items that raise your health or strength, and have a trade value.
If an Encounter forces you to draw a Fatality card, you can spend one of your Destiny points to draw another card and hopefully avoid the Fatality. If you manage to survive for 6 rounds, you win the game. You may check the Kickstarter Preview.
Just got my copy delivered and it looks OK. No rulebook, only a QR-code to scan...hmmm. Anyway I had ordered the playmat already privately based on the final design they provided during the KS and it really looks great on the table! Will let you know my first findings later...
Yes, that's why I ordered the WotS expansion, I hope it gives the player some more control over the deck. I like the game but it feels unfair.
A lot of randomness? That sounds somewhat annoying.
Gameplay is completely different but probably equally hard to beat, with a lot of randomness.
Thanks for the reply, Athena. Do you know if this is a 'sorta sequel' to Way of the Samurai (also from Alone Editions), with mostly just a different theme, or is it completely different?