This new computer game release is based upon the Java Ticket to Ride currently found online, but it has improved AI, an improved interface, and the aforementioned new map. It also makes it even easier to login online.

Ticket to Ride: The Computer Game runs on Windows or Mac OSX 10.3+. It requires Java and on Windows an OpenGL-enabled graphic driver.

The Gameplay

Ticket to Ride comes with three dramatically different types of gameplay.

America: First you get the original USA game. Here you draw colored train cards which you'll later use to claim routes of the same colors, bridging American cities. You're attempting to score points with particularly long routes and (more importantly) by matching your destination tickets which give lengthier connection requirements, such as Los Angeles to New York. You get positive points if you complete destination cards by the end of the game and negative points if you fail to.

See my original review for more info.

Europe: A more challenging gamer's game. As in the original you try and lay routes that match your destination tickets, but this time you'll get just one opportunity for a long route, drawn at the start of the game. All the rest of your routes will be short.

There are two new types of tracks: ferries, which require wild locomotive cards to complete; and tunnels, which may randomly take 0-3 extra cards to finish.

Finally you also get stations, which can be used to bridge track that you weren't able to claim, and that's a good thing because the center of Europe can be quite congested.

Again, see my original review for more info.

Switzerland: This is a brand-new game, available for play only as part of this computer game. It's a smaller, tighter map, and thus you only get 40 train cars to start with (rather than 45) . In addition, only 2 or 3 players can play. With 2 players the special double tracks aren't available, but with 3 they are.

The biggest new idea in Switzerland is countries. There are four of them: Germany, Austria, Italy, and France. You now draw have city-to-country destination cards, which designate a specific city to be connected to any of the external countries and country-to-country cards, which designate a specific country to be connected to one of the other three countries. Each card gives values for each of the other countries that you can connect to. If you succeed you'll get points for the highest point connection you made and if you fail you're only penalized for the least.

For example you might get a "Germany" country-to-country ticket. If you connect it to the nearby Austria you just get a few poinst, but if you connect all the way across the board to Italy you'll get quite a few more.

Switzerland also has lots of tunnels, which work just like those in Europe. There are also special tunnel cards, which replace the wild locomotive cards found in other sets. You can use these tunnel cards to complete any tunnel track but can't use them to complete regular tracks, which creates some very different dynamics.

Ways to Play Ticket to Ride

There are two ways to play Ticket to Ride: against AI or online.

It's worth noting that this computer game dooesn't really support multiple players using the same account on the same computer. You can't play hotseat against each other, and you have to change your login and password to log into a different online account. (There's no way to store that account info for multiple local players.)

AI: You can play against one to four AI players in a totally local game of Ticket to Ride, not needing any type of network connection.

Overall, I find the AI somewhat poor. The AI players kind of seem to know what they're doing, but they don't always make the best decisions, and they're not very aggressive about blocking as some of the better players are. I like to think I'm a pretty decent Ticket to Ride player. In the online Ticket to Ride I tend to be in the top 5-10% of players. In about a dozen three-player games, I lost twice to the AI. So, for me at least they've got a 2:22 win:loss ratio. Your mileage may vary.

And, despite the fact that they don't win often, at least the AIs do keep me on my toes, and I never shake my head at their moves. As you could probably guess from the fact that I've played a dozen games against them. And, I'd be more concerned about the so-so AIs if online play wasn't so easy to use.

There is a high-score list that goes with the "solo"/AI play, so that you can mark your top scores. Personally, I much prefer ranking systems, such as that used for the online play.

Online: Days of Wonder has long supported online play of a few of their games, including Ticket to Ride. This new computer game interfaces with that online community seamlessly. From within the game you can quickly & easily connect up to the online lobby for Days of Wonder and join an existing game or else start a game of your own with any of the three maps. (Though Switzerland games can only be started by owners of this game, anyone can play them once they've been started.)

Days of Wonder's online community for Ticket to Ride play is phenomenal. Since the game really took off, more than a year ago, I've never had to wait more than a minute or two to get into a two-player game. 3+ player games can take several minutes to fill, but will, even in the wee hours of the morning.

Days of Wonder also uses a good ranking system for their players, so that you can easily measure yourself against your online opponents. This ranking information is available from Hall of Fame included with the computer game. You'll see your current rankings as well all the top players.

You'll get a year of online play with your purchase of Ticket to Ride: The Computer Game. Once that runs out you can play as a guest, buy a low-cost continuing subscription, or get additional half-years of play when you buy additional Days of Wonder games.

The Game Design

The computer game of Ticket to Ride has all of the great gameplay of its tabletop brethren. As I said in my original review, Ticket to Ride has tough decisions, great brinkmanship, and real strategy in both set collection and connection building. The only real deficit to the game is that it's somewhat shallow. There isn't huge depth to the game, but as a light game there's enough to keep you coming back. To date I've played 64 games of face-to-face Ticket To Ride, about that many online, and another few solo in this new computer game, and it remains fun and interesting. And that's just the original game.

Meanwhile both Ticket to Ride Europe and Ticket to Ride Switzerland allow for slightly more sophisticated gameplay, in addition to really increasing variety through the dramatically different maps.

I feel like the game design of Ticket to Ride has come across well in these computer versions. For awhile, after the original release of the Ticket to Ride online game, that was my preferred way to play because the gameplay was so much faster thanks to not having to fiddle with physical components like cards and trains.

I overall feel like the speed of the interface improves Ticket to Ride's gameplay, though that's offset by some information (e.g., size of the draw deck, number of cards in each players hands, number of trains left) not being quite as obvious in the computer game; all the over is there, just easy to lose track. On the whole I give the computer game the same Substance rating I gave the original tabletop games: "5" out of "5".

It's also worth noting that that Ticket to Ride: The Computer Game uses Java code, and I've seen some minor flakiness in it. The worst was one online lockup, though I've seen the online Hall of Fames get out of sync a couple of times. Overall, though, the game is quite stable, and the minor problems weren't enough to reduce the rating.

The Components

Ticket to Ride: The Computer Game comes in a CD case with two discs: the CD for installing Ticket to Ride and a boardgame demo DVD.

The CD: A simple computer CD which is easily loaded onto your computer, then not required afterward.

The DVD: The DVD contains an overview of Days of Wonder and segments on 7 of their game: Ticket to Ride, Ticket to Ride Europe, Shadows Over Camelot, Gang of Four, Mystery of the Abbey, Memoir '44, and Pirate's Cove.

Each segment introduces the game, then gives a pretty thorough rules explanation. I skimmed most of the segments, but the rules explanations seemed extremely thorough: more than enough to play the game. From what I saw the rules to Gang of Four were entirely complete, while those for Ticket to Ride Europe only left out one slightly esoteric rule (that it's easier to build a tunnel if you use all wild cards).

I suspect these demos would be great to teach the games if people don't like learning from rulebooks.

Graphics & UI

Graphics: The main graphics of the Ticket to Ride computer game are the elements of the Ticket to Ride boardgame: the maps, train cards, and other artwork from the game. This has been blended with soome simple graphical accents, such as machinery and metalwork, which together create a coherent & attractive interface.

The board is designed for use at 1028x768, though it apparently resizes itself for a variety of screen sizes. At that size all of the graphical elements are very clear, and the board in particular is really easy to read. (It's a bit bigger than the board you use in the web-based version of the game, which is itself pretty clear.)

You can also zoom in on the map, but I've never particularly seen the need to.

Surrounding the map are all of the other elements of the game: which train cards you have, which destination tickets you have, which cards are available, and what's going on with each of your opponents. The stacks of cards are all pretty easy to make out, though you have to page through your routes if you want to look at them (though their end points are also marked on the map, as noted below).

Across the top of the screen you have a large tab for each opponent. These are marked with character drawings matching the color, which is a really nice element which gives an element of humanity to your opponents. Those tabs also contain info on your opponents: how many trains they have, how many cards they have, and how many tickets they have. It's pretty easy to lose track of that info if you're not paying attention, but it's all there whenever you want to reference it.

Audio: The game has four different scores of background music. There's some saloon piano music that's used for the general game pages. That changes to "Red River Valley", good 'ole American pioneer music, when you play the USA. You get a classical score when you play Europe and some "oom-pah", with the french horn, tuba, accordian, and just a touch of yodeling when you play Switzerland. The music is cute enough, and I appreciated the different scores. I usually don't like background music in games, and so my main criteria is whether they annoy me. These didn't and I actually quite liked the European classical score.

The game also uses a variety of incidental sounds for just about every action in the game, from drawing the cards to playing track. A good job has been done of differentiating sounds, so you can have a general idea of what was done even if you weren't watching. I didn't use any audio for my first dozen or some games of the computer game. When I turned it on I found that the alert sounds--particularly the ones noting the start of a player's turn and the one noting the start of your turn--were also extremely helpful for helping you keep track of what's going on.

User Interface: The user interface is a pretty simple drag-and-drop. You pull cards over when you want them, then later move those cards onto the track you want to claim. There's a couple of places where double-clicking can speed things up, such as when you take a card, and I always make use of that speed up.

Player Helpers: A little bit of work has been done to make the destination cards easier to use. First of all the end points of every one of your destination cards is marked on the board in bright red. I find this hugely helpful, and have sometimes wished for these marks in the tabletop game. Second, there's a count of how many tickets you've successfully completed. At least once I thought I'd finished a ticket and hadn't, and this count saved me.

Overall, these are both great player helpers, and exactly the type of addition that you want a computer game to include.

Overall, the graphics for Ticket to Ride are attractive, though not quite as amazing as the really high-quality components you find in the tabletop game. The interface is easy to use and makes the game easier to play. On the whole I've thus given the computer game a "4" out of "5" for Style: well above average.

Conclusion

Ticket to Ride: The Computer Game is based on Days of Wonder's original online version of their popular tabletop boardgame: a great, light game. This CD version has a nicer interface and bigger maps, and also supports a totally new board: Switzerland. It also integrates well with the online site, making it really easy to play Ticket to Ride in a variety of forms. The new Switzerland map is well worth the price of admission alone, while everything else is a nice bonus.

This is recommended both for Ticket to Ride fans, and people who have been wanting to trying out the boardgame.

Right now this game is primarily available through the Days of Wonder Online Store. There's a discount for people who own one or more of the Ticket to Ride boardgames (or buy them simultaneously).

Help support RPGnet by purchasing this item through DriveThruRPG.