Rayroads

Game Design: Amabel Holland
Hex Number: 93
Duration: 120 minutes
Players: 3-4
MSRP: $50.00

Your world is dying. Soon, the last of its resources will be extracted from its husk, and it will no longer be able to support life. Now you turn your attention toward the stars. You’ll drain the life from your sun to propel your trains through the void, crack open the other planets in your system to exploit their precious minerals, and increase your company’s value to shareholders as all of you go extinct.

The first new train game from Amabel Holland in six years, Rayroads is an unusual approach to the genre that extends the logic of capitalism to its nihilistic conclusion.

Each round of Rayroads will see players take resources from their dying planet - making it less inhabitable - in order to take an action. You might plan a route for your space train - taking into account the orbits of planets - powered by the sun you're intentionally collapsing. You might build a moonbase to begin cracking open other planets - they're probably uninhabited, but you haven't really bothered to check. Or you'll tear open the fabric of space itself to make your travels more efficient - pity about what it does to the orbits of nearby planets.

The game ends when you've collapsed your sun, destroyed your home planet, or been destroyed by your capitalist-fascist eugenics doomsday cult. Players tally their profits, subtract their debits, and apply some multipliers to arrive at their final scores. The highest score wins, but as everyone is now dead, what does it matter?