Players: 2-5
Time: 15-30 minutes
Difficulty: 3 (of 10)
The Components
As with the rest of the Hip Pocket Games, Steam Tunnel comes in a little plastic baggy. It contains: 48 cards, the rules.
The Cards: The cards in Steam Tunnel are all printed on medium cardstock in grayscales. Each card features six entry points for tunnels (one coming in from each of the top and bottom; two from each of the left and right). Between those entry points, tunnels can bend, turn, branch, or end. There can be as few as two tunnel segments on a card (when you have a couple of branches) or as many as four (when you have a couple of "caps", which end tunnels).
Four cards, called the "point cards", instead feature an end cap for each of the six tunnel entries and a number from 2-4, which is ultimately used for scoring.
The Rules: The rules are printed in black and white on a four-fold rulesheet. They're fairly simple, and also feature some diagrams to clarify setup and scoring. A set of variations at the end of the rules offer some new ways to play Steam Tunnel.
Other Components: You'll also need about 20 colored stones or other markers for each player. I used Cheapass' microchips, then had to come up with some pennies for a fifth player color. Cheapass' stones would probably have worked better.
Overall the quality of the packaged components is fine, and a perfectly good deal for the low price point. The tunnels are easy to see and as easy to score as could be expected given the game system's scoring complexities. The game thus earns an average "3" out of "5" for Style.
The Game Play
The goal of Steam Tunnel is to take control of as many highly valued tunnels as possible.
Setup: Game play begins with the construction of a 6x6 grid of cards. The four "point" cards are placed face up, each one row and one column in from the edges. The other 32 cards on the grid are all placed face-down; they'll be revealed during play. Important note: the board wraps around, top to bottom and left to right for the purpose of all tunnel continuations.
Order of Play: Each player, in turn, takes the following actions during his turn:
- Flip a Card
- Buy or Bury
Flip a Card: A player takes one of the face-down cards and flips it face-up. It's laid done in whatever orientation he happens to flip it to; the player doesn't get to choose the way it faces. Flipping this card will reveal 6 tunnel entry points and somewhere between 2 and 4 actual tunnel segments, as discussed above, each one connecting up to other tunnel segments and/or currently face-down cards.
Buy or Bury: The player may then choose to either buy a tunnel segment or bury a card.
Buy a Tunnel Segment: A player buys a tunnel segment by placing one of his stones on one of the tunnel segments of a face-up card. This segment may be on any face-up card, not only the one he just flipped up. There are a couple of simple rules for this:
- The tunnel segment may not be part of a closed tunnel (e.g., capped in all directions, with no possibilities for expansion). This applies even if the player just closed the tunnel with his card flip.
- The tunnel segment must not be already owned by any other player (though there can be ownership markers in other segments of the same tunnel).
- The teeny little bit of a tunnel on a card featuring an end cap does not count as a tunnel segment, and thus you can't purchase it.
Majority control of a tunnel at end game will give you its score, so that's what you're trying to achieve.
Bury a Card. Instead of buying a tunnel segment you may bury a card. To do this you take one of your markers and place it on top of a face-down card. That card may not be flipped up during the game. Instead, all tunnels are assumed to go straight across it (top to bottom or left to right). Clearly this is a good idea if you want to guarantee your tunnel will connect up to a valuable end cap, avoid an opponent, or otherwise avoid the vagaries of chance.
End Game: The game ends as soon as the last card is flipped over. (That poor sucker doesn't even get to buy a tunnel segment, because all the paths are now closed.) At that point you score all the tunnels.
Each tunnel is worth the number of tunnel segments it includes (again, not counting the end cap spaces as tunnel segments and also not counting buried cards) times the sum of all its end caps. (Recall end caps on the point cards are worth 2-4; end caps on other cards are each worth zero.) For example, a three-segment tunnel with end caps of 2 and 3 would be worth 3 * (2 + 3) = 15 points.
Points are only scored for the majority holder in the tunnel; if there's a tie, they each get an apropriate fraction of the points (e.g., a half, a third, etc.).
Relationship to Other Games
Steam Tunnel is a fairly simple "pipe" game with "majority control" scoring. There are a number of other pipe games in the Hip Pocket series including The Very Clever Pipe Game, Nexus, and Timeline.
Steam Tunnel distinguishes itself from other pipe games because the pipe-laying is largely an automatic function. You can try and guess how tunnels will meander, but it's ultimately controlled by chance, except for the option to bury cards. The core game play of the game is actually centered on territory control of those pipes revealed (and figuring out ways to assure yourself of majority through diplomacy or careful decision of what cards to flip and/or bury).
The Game Design
Here's some of the good parts of the design:
Good Strategic Possibilities: A card-flipping and terrain control game could be very basic, but Steam Tunnel manages to add in a few strategic possibilities, including: the ability to prevent further ownership markers through closing a tunnel; the ability to bury cards to speed up closure; and the ability to bury cards to ensure pipes running in certain directions.
Burying Also Blurs Time Issues: The ability to bury a card also shakes up people counting on specific timing because it essentially allows you to determine a second card's value in a single turn. This is fairly crucial in end-game, but can also be an issue mid-game where a clever gamer can close up a tunnel a turn earlier than otherwise possible.
Interesting Cooperative Possibilities: Sometimes players will find themselves in balance, where they start working together to finish up a tunnel rather than wasting resources racing for supremacy. This type of cooperation usually benefits a game's fun factor.
Here was my one real issue:
Scoring is Tedious: The rules suggest a very good way to keep track of scoring, where you pull off stones as you score each tunnel, but it's still various tedious with lots of counting and summing and multiplication. This can also make the final scoring quite opaque prior to the final count.
Overall Steam Tunnel was a perfectly enjoyable play, and thus it earns a "3" out of "5" Substance rating.
Conclusion
Steam Tunnel takes a couple of simple abstract concepts--paths and territory control--and develops them in a way that's strategic and interesting to play. This is a nice little game.
