The Transcontinental

Some games feel as though they could only exist thanks to crowdfunding, and The Transcontinental is exactly that kind of game. Its mechanisms alone made me want to buy it, with the familiar worry that it might turn out either brilliant or another Small Railroad Empires—and yes, what rubbish that was. After an understandable delay caused by the crisis, it arrived almost silently, received a positive nod from a well-known influencer, and I was impatient to finally get it to the table.

At its core, I place workers, build a supply chain, and then construct my industrial engine. There is no single flashy innovation here that I need to point at. The point is that these familiar parts do not merely sit beside one another: the supply chain determines what I can sustain, while the growth of production gives purpose to my worker-placement choices.

The race for objectives has a semi-cooperative flavour, but information is measured and the game is anything but gentle. I can see what the others are preparing, I can cut them off, and naturally they can do the same to me. If I lock myself out of the basic means of production, I can put myself out of the game all by myself. That threat makes every placement decision and every claim on resources matter far more.

This is not a feel-good economic game, and that is part of its appeal. For me, the way its mechanisms lock together is extremely well considered, even though none of them is new in isolation. For fans of economic games, I consider it a must-buy.

My only small reservation concerns four players: I fear it may become too tight there. With the three of us who played it, though, it had exactly the right blend of constraint and breathing room.