Trails from Parks

‘Trails’, from Henry Aubudon and Keymaster Games, is billed, right there on the front of the box, as 'A Parks game' so it’s hard not make comparisons with its larger sibling from the off. Much like ‘Parks’ you’re once again going for a walk along a trail, collecting resources and buying point scoring cards however ‘Trails’ takes that familiar idea, trims the fat, adds a clever twist and ends up a whole different game.

After dealing out the five trail tiles, capping them with the Trailhead and Trail end tiles, players take turns to move their hiker meeple one or two places down the trail before taking the action on the site you land on. Generally these actions allow you to gain or exchange resources but one site also lets you take a picture card and since pictures earn you points at the end of the game its very much worth snapping away. Once a hiker gets to the trail end the player can use resources they’ve accumulated to buy Badge Cards and get ready to start back along the trail on their next turn.

Those Badge Cards I mentioned are where the bulk of end game points will come from but crucially some also offer one time bonus actions when purchased them making timing your trip to the end of the trail crucial to nab the card offering the bonus you want. Badges also sometimes have bird icons on them and its worth keeping any eye on those as the player with the most birds at the end of the game (they can also be found on photo cards) will score an extra four points.

If all that sounds a little bland it’s because I’ve been holding out on you, I've not mentioned the Sun token. The big gameplay twist in ‘Trails’ is the idea of daylight, each trail tile has a daytime and night time side with the night time side offering more a powerful variant of the daytime action. Above the trail a sun token slowly travels from right to left during the game causing trail tiles to be flipped as it passes over them. That movement of the sun token is triggered when a hiker reaches the end of the trail and also allows the hiker in question to take the action of the trail tile the sun token is currently above before it slides to the left. So again, much like the bonus abilities of badge cards, timing that move to the trail end to grab the sun bonus you need is crucial.

When the players have moved up and down the trail often enough to have turned the whole thing to night the game comes to an end and points are tallied. It’s a simple yet clever system that ties into the theme perfectly and gives the game a completely different feel to Parks. The game builds to a nice crescendo as the more powerful actions take over the trail and since you're never fighting for spaces (other hikers don't block you from visiting a site) success is far more about careful planning and maximising what bonuses you can chain than I was expecting.

Coming in a much smaller box with way less bling and a smaller price tag than its sibling ‘Trails’ does a fantastic job of providing a really different game experience despite the obvious similarities. You could honestly make a solid case for either of them being the better game but personally I think there's room in my rucksack for both of them.