In Roam, by beloved author Ryan Laukat and published by Red Raven Games, you and the other players search for wandering adventurers. The ancient land of Arzium has been plagued down by a sleep illness, which has doomed the creatures of the land to wander through the land sleepwalking. Are you awake enough to wake these wanderers or is this quest a yawn fest?
I would describe Roam as an area-control puzzle. The players try to conquer exposed cards by placing travelstones. During a turn, a player may play one of his/her character cards by turning it over. The character card depicts a pattern. By playing this card, a player may place this pattern on the playing area (one of the six cards in the centre of the table). They must be able to place all the tiles of the pattern within the playing area in the orientation indicated on the card. They are not allowed to rotate the pattern. If there are already travelstones in the playing area on a space where you want to place your pattern, you may place your stones on empty spaces on that space, but do not remove already placed travelstones. Some of the spaces on the cards in the playing area show coins. By placing tokens on these spaces, the player receives these tokens.
Once a card in the playing area contains six tokens, the player with the most tokens on this card receives the card itself. If there is a tie, players can bid coins for this card. By conquering a card, you unlock a new character. You place this character in front of you and these unlocked characters give you points but also new patterns to play with during the game. During the game you try to collect both points and favourable patterns to help you further during the course of the game.
Used characters are turned over to indicate that they have been used. Once all your characters are asleep again, you may return them to a well-rested state. During the game, you can choose to reactivate used cards earlier by paying coins for each character that is still unused. This allows you to reuse favourable patterns more quickly. In addition to characters, players can also collect artifacts, ancient and mysterious relics from the ancient Arzium civilisation, to help them during the game. Artifacts can be purchased with coins and provide additional actions that you can use during your turn.
Roam is a highly interactive puzzle where players will compete for supremacy of different cards. Players do not only compete for victory points, but also for useful characters/patterns. This results in interesting choices and dilemmas. Which card do I want to conquer and how can I best use my available characters for this? Players also have to take into account the management of their characters. Some patterns are better suited for certain situations, and activating characters early can be a rude awakening. Which pattern do I use? Where do I place this pattern? How do I get the most use out of a character? Which card gives me the most points? Does this card also provide me with a useful character/pattern? Do I activate my cards early? Do I go for lots of coins or do I conquer this card in the meantime? Certainly no sleep-inducing choices! In terms of gameplay and mechanics, Roam is simple and intuative, but gives more than enough choices to appeal to the strategic gamer as well. Besides designing the game, Ryan Laukat is also the graphic designer and illustrator of this game and Roam, just like his other games, is beautifully designed. A dream of a game!
