Kansas Pacific

Kansas Pacific has the spare, slightly old-fashioned charm of a Cube Rail game: it occupies the table, takes about an hour of your life, and somehow leaves you saying, “One more.” It is neither remarkable nor poor; it is a pleasant little railway stop after a Tuesday at work.

Its centre is the map and the routes on it. You build and follow the rail network through the familiar economic logic of the genre, trying to judge where matters are heading and which line deserves your attention.

That is where the player interaction lives too: other players’ choices alter the routes you are considering. The trouble is that finding the right line on this map is often more tiring than the game warrants, because the colours and graphic design seem determined to fight the information they are meant to convey.

The 230 steam meeples are lovely little things, the sort you want to hold and borrow for every other Cube Rail game. But a map is not background decoration; it is the stage for the whole performance, and this one rather spoils the calm. Kansas Pacific remains a decent, quick Cube Rail worth replaying, but it would be quietly excellent if you could plainly see where you were going.