Off the Rails

[paramesis]

Hey, that's mine!
Off the Rails by Rotten games is now in Beta! Thank you to all the Alpha testers for your feedback and support!

Game Page on BGA
Game Page on BoardGameGeek
Official Website
Rules

From BGG:

Off the Rails is a strategic, competitive, tile placement, roller-coaster of a board game for 1-4 players recommended for ages 12+. Players control a team of gem-hungry goblins racing uncontrollable mine carts underground to retrieve the most jewels before the earth collapses into the deadly chasm below!

Easy to pick up and play but with a compelling strategic puzzle for more hardened gamers to master, Off the Rails combines thoughtful tile placement and planning with cut-throat racing and out of control anticipation! Culminating in the total destruction of the board, can you leave your opponents eating your gold-dust and escape the chasm with the most expensive gems?

[KeithJ]

This looks to be an entertaining game, so I decided to try a couple of games with a view to recommending it for my grandson.

I've noticed that it doesn't appear to take notice of players' colour preferences. It would probably be worth addressing this.

[paramesis]

Thanks for playing! Turn order is determined by player colors, which are printed on the board. Because of that, color preference is not supported according to BGA policy.

[KeithJ]

Ah, OK. Fair enough, I hadn't realised that, thanks.

[alephander]

I can't find where to give feedback about the implementation, so I'm gonna post here.

- the board orientation has confused several people i've taught it to. they assume "their" side of the board is at the bottom. It would be nice if the orientation of the board could be drawn in favor this way of each player.
- it's really hard to see a black rock in the black cart. someone i was teaching missed it.
- rules say in the collision, the hit player must divide their cart contents into two hands "as evenly as possible", but in our game a person put two gold in one hand and a rock and a ruby in the other. this is not even, in terms of score!. maybe evenly just means in terms of number? this is not clear.
- rotating the tiles on the action pane is a worse user experience than if we could rotate them on the board, after placing. the visuals aren't as clear in terms of connecting up the directions. if you let player choose the spot first, then the orientation can be constrained to only those that make sense, saving some time perhaps. (acknowledging, however, the display is a bit crowded already, with track, gems, cart all potentially together. an existing issue)

[paramesis]

Thanks for your feedback. The best place to note suggestions would be the bug reporting page so that items can be tracked and referenced.
https://boardgamearena.com/bugs?game=1223

The orientation of the board has come up a couple times and has a suggestion report here: https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=21247
I have been working out how to implement this since it is a popular suggestion, but as I've noted in the linked report it's not as simple as it might seem to ensure all the animation logic is correct. Given the time I have to develop here, it would push my other projects back at least a week.

I can add more of a glow effect around rocks in a black cart.

The jewel split has always been interpreted as the total number of items in each hand, as the designer confirms on BGG here: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/194379 ... 4#31108974

The track placement interface went through a few iterations in development, as I worked toward a system that would be as intuitive as possible without requiring too many steps/clicks, because you're laying or upgrading up to four tiles on your turn. An interface similar to Carcassonne would make the common use case of multiple straights in a row take several more steps. There is an alternative interface available as a user preference that lets you lay and upgrade track tiles by clicking directly on the board on edges of tiles you would like to connect, skipping the action palette altoghether. You can access this by clicking on the upper right menu or the "Options" tab below the game board and changing "Track Upgrade Interface" to "Add exits".

Regarding the crowding of tiles, you can "pick up" a cart to see what is under it any time by clicking on it.