Switchbacks Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review Switchbacks, a tile laying game published by Allplay. In this simple filler game, players are placing tiles onto a grid and trying to get their hikers on runs of 4 numbers.

Board game publisher Allplay (formerly Board Game Tables) has been making a name for themselves with their small box games. I’ve lost track of how many they’ve released to date (a couple dozen maybe?), but they always do a good job of capturing my attention. The art and small form factor are both exceptional, so the real question is if the gameplay holds up.

And to answer that question we are going to be looking at Switchbacks, a hiking-themed game that’s actually a retheme of the original Japanese game Connect37.

In Switchbacks, there are 37 hexagonal tiles, numbered from 1-37. Each player starts the game by secretly looking at one of the tiles and removing it from the game. Then, on a player’s turn, they first explore by taking one of the tiles from their hand and placing it onto the grid. Then they can either choose to Hike the tile, placing a Meeple on it, or Buddy Up, putting a pair of Meeples off to the side for later use. A future Hike action may use the buddy pair to place both Meeples on the same tile.

The game ends after all tiles have been played. Each hiker will score a point if it’s on a complete hiking path. A hiking path is complete if it’s part of a consecutive number run of at least 4 tiles. The player with the most points is the hiking champion.

Switchbacks is a game that fellow BGQ reviewer Andrew would say is “Fine”. It’s a game that does what it sets out to do, but also does nothing to really stand out. The rulebook is a tiny 3 pages (with generous use of illustrations), so you can get up and playing this one in minutes. Play a tile, maybe put a hiker on it, draw back up. Easy peasy.

Despite the lack of anything noteworthy, Switchbacks is still a solid game. It plays quickly—about 15 minutes—which feels about the right amount. The little wrinkle of knowing one