Railroads

Chicago Express is a railroad operations and investment boardgame with zero luck, for up to six players. It is a simplified and shortened, 60-minute version of the the classic 1830: Railways & Robber Barons (1830) boardgame by Francis Tresham. Like 1830, the stock market model is simplistic, but it simulates supply-and-demand and market-cornering elegantly. The premise of both games is that you play a railroad tycoon financing the western expansion of historical American railroad companies in the 1800s.

Games produce fanatical geeks. Not all games, of course, but games of very diverse sorts: You'll find people who practically live for Counter-Strike or World of Warcraft and people who spend a big part of their waking life painting miniatures, and on and on. Railroad games are a case in point; people who love rail games will often play something else, but their eyes light up when you start talking about trains.

City Traffic Simulator is, in fact, a tram sim; that is, you operate a light rail car in an invented European city.

There's a bit of a sim/tycoon aspect; you don't lay new lines, but you earn money by transporting passengers, with which you may purchase new tram cars. You start with the ability to run only one of several routes in the city, and unlock new routes by successfully transporting some number of passengers of different social classes.

Game designer Brenda Brathwaite is perhaps best known for her work on the classic Wizardry and Jagged Alliance series of PC games, although she has certainly kept busy since. Her latest project is in fact a series of six non-digital games, and it is one of those games that I write about today.

Andrew Ewanchyna is among a scant handful of people who've been making their living as indie game developers for years; his most interesting title is Starships Unlimited, a rather innovative 4X game, though Starship Kingdom and Battleship Chess aren't bad either.

He describes Loco Mogul as "a cross between Oasis and Railroad Tycoon."

Ticket to Ride was the winner of the 2004 Spiel des Jahres Award, the single most prestigious award world-wide for boardgames. And Alan Moon, its designer, is one of the most highly regarded designers of contemperary boardgames. From its website, the publishers, Days of Wonder, offer a free online-playable version of the game--with some limitations on free players.