Word Traveler Board Game Review

When it comes to word and/or party games, I’m usually not one to sit at the table and play. I do love a cooperative game – see our Tainted Grail first impressions! – but I’m more of an adventure game fan as opposed to a word game fan. Something like Illiterati was a lot of fun, sure, but that’s about as far as my love for word games go. Word Traveler is a word game at its core, but one that balances an understanding of who your partners are, deductive thinking, and more! Let’s take a look at Word Traveler, and see if it is something you should add to your board game collection!

In World Traveler, players will each have a passport with a card that corresponds to one of four city boards. These boards highlight landmarks, cool locations, famous works of art, and more that are tied to the specific city you are exploring. On your card will be a number of landmarks, and points that you can earn if you correctly guide other players to those specific locations on the board (which is broken up into a grid). Starting in the middle, players will need to provide clues that will help other players choose the correct landmark to stop on, either north, south, east, or west. The active player will choose words that best describe the location they are trying to get others to guess, and uses an arrow corresponding to one direction to indicate which way players should look.

For example, if you were attempting to get players to guess The Starry Night painting space, you might use words like “expensive” or “elegant” or “famous.” The trick is, however, that you don’t want to give clues that might make players pick something else! To further complicate how this game works, the active player will need to choose words and arrows for ALL of the locations they are trying to get the other players to guess, either 3 or 5, depending on the round. And with only 10 cards in your hand to provide clues, you cannot use to many of them on one location, as it could hamper future clues! If players guess the first clue wrong, they likely will get the rest wrong as well since you continue on heading north, south, east and west form the locations you stop at.

And this might be a stopping point for a lot of people. Getting that first clue right is pretty important, but that also feeds into the strategy of how to play the game. Giving a few extra clues on the first stop is probably not a bad idea, especially if I gets people headed in the right direction. Again, this could be something that annoys some people, but I think is still a great mechanic.

And thankfully, like with any games that have an odd or quick “game over” mechanic, it’s a pretty quick experience so you’ll be in the next round before you know it, either in a brand new game or trying to guess the clues of the next person around the table.  There is something really simplistic about this design, with World Traveler being the first game from Office Dog, and I like it. I’m excited to see where this studio goes in the future!