Spotlight: Trekking the World

In Trekking the World, you and your friends and/or family compete to gather the most souvenir cubes while globetrotting across the continents, taking tours to gather the most points and be the most well traveled of your friends!

I’ll be doing a brief run through of the 2 player variant below.

Each player picks a Meeple, and a player board of the same color, and is dealt three cards from the Trek Deck. After shuffling the Trek cards, deal three to each player, and then lay out four from the top of the deck face up. You’ll draw from these at the end of each turn and fill the spaces appropriately.

You’ll set up the Tour cards in a similar fashion, laying out four cards that will represent the tours you can take.

Then you’ll place two cards in the ‘Journey Log,’ which also modify the ways you and your players can move around the board.

During each turn a player can choose to move between unoccupied airport tiles first, and then they must use one or more of their trek cards in their hand to move to a new destination. Any combination of trek cards may be used, but you have to move the exact number of the discarded cards value in order to reach a new destination on the map. Each trek card has a value (for moving) and a suit (for cashing in to gain a destination card). Destination cards award points which contribute to your overall total points.

Once they’ve landed, the player will collect a souvenir cube and place it on their player board. Each player with the most cubes in each category (more than 2) is awarded the “Most” award card for that color. There are four of these: Most Postcards (white), Most Clothing (red), Most Figurines (blue), and Most Crafts (yellow).

The game goes on like this as players take their turns, using trek cards to move around the globe, collecting souvenir cubes, and trading in trek cards to gain destination cards. Trek cards can also be traded in to use one of the Journey Log bonuses at the top of the board. These bonuses modify the game in various ways, from making movement cheaper, or destinations easier to acquire, for example.

Trekking the World is a fun point salad-esque game that is simple enough for families, but with enough moving parts to keep the older players engaged as well. There is a healthy level of competition without there being hurt feelings and bitter players. The artwork is bright and inspiring, especially on the destination cards!