Playtesting

Meeple Run

Meeple Run game tiles from a playtest

Build the city. Control the routes. Run the meeples.

2–4p · 40–60min · Age 10+ · Medium light · Active 2021–present

Plays like: Carcassonne meets Tsuro

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Mechanisms: , ,

You and the other players are building a city outward from a central plaza by driving your truck to a building site, laying roads, constructing buildings, and moving meeples to their intended destinations.

But every time your truck or a meeple passes over a road on your turn, the player who built it gets a point if that road tile was face-up, and it flips over; otherwise, you get a point and flip the road back. Each player has two special road tiles that are always face-up, and tiles that a truck is parked on don’t flip either, so you have a way to manage how many times you and your opponents score. You must follow the shortest (or a shortest) route possible, so choose carefully where to build!

On the surface, it looks a bit like Carcassonne, but the meeples in this game aren’t yours and they don’t stay in one place. And Tsuro also features tokens automatically moving along a path, but in this game they each have a desired destination (matching the meeple color).

You’ll want to manipulate the roads so that they get there along a route that scores as much for you as possible and as little for your opponents as you can manage.

See also: Pipe Scramble, my first game design, where you took turns laying pipes instead of roads; this game started as a fork from that.

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