If your group has a soft spot for small-box games that punch above their weight, Railway Porters is worth flagging for your next session. The new release from Kyoto studio Saashi & Saashi, the team behind cult favourites Coffee Roaster and Let's Make a Bus Route, puts you in the boots of a station porter, frantically loading luggage onto departing trains before the whistle blows.
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Set up your group for freeIt is a dice-placement game for 2 to 4 players, and it moves fast. Everyone acts at the same time each round, rolling six dice each and slotting them onto station boards that all score in their own way. There are six different stations to work through across the game's five rounds, so the puzzle keeps shifting. The clever bit is the Roll Call: each round you decide whether to keep pushing your luck or lock in your score, and any dice you have not placed get passed along to the other players. Hold on too long and you hand your rivals exactly what they need.
Saashi & Saashi have built a reputation for tidy, thinky small-box designs, and Railway Porters fits that mould. It plays in about 30 minutes, suits ages 10 and up, and the double-sided station boards give you six stations from a compact stack. Punchboard's review was warm enough to ask whether it might be the studio's best yet.
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See how it worksThe game debuted at Game Market in Japan and made its way to UK Games Expo, so British gamers do not have to import blind. At around 5,500 yen (roughly £30) it sits in cosy-filler territory rather than big-box money. If you are after a brisk, brain-tickling game that fills the gap between heavier titles, round up your group and give the porters a shift.
Sources: Saashi & Saashi | Punchboard | BoardGameGeek
