Disclosure: Meeple Mountain received a free copy of this product in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. This review is not intended to be an endorsement.
The PARKS brand—featuring the most popular game in the Keymaster Games catalog—is well known in my circles. Multiple players love PARKS as the casual game of choice both for core hobbyists (as a medium-length filler) and those looking for an easier time at the table with a handsome, well-produced experience.
Each time I play PARKS, I come away uttering a version of “yeah, that was pretty good” while being thankful that the teach takes about five minutes and decisions are not too taxing. And the cards are so beautiful! Even if someone doesn’t like PARKS for the gameplay, everyone loves the look.
In that same vein, I was pretty excited to hear that Keymaster was working on a roll-and-write game in the PARKS universe…and now we have Parks: Roll & Hike, hot off the press and ready to go. (I clarified with the Keymaster team that going forward, game titles in the PARKS line will not be written in CAPS.) During a recent trip to the beach, I was able to unleash Parks: Roll & Hike four times—a mix of solo and multiplayer play, using four of the six included maps—to get a solid feel for the experience.
If you liked PARKS, I think you will enjoy Parks: Roll & Hike. The game is easy to teach, so easy that my eight-year-old had the gameplay down by the second round of the game. Like PARKS, I really liked Roll & Hike because of the turn structure.
And this is a fancy production for a roll-and-write game, with great dice, nearly full-length pencils (my big hands say thank you, Keymaster!!), unnecessarily handsome guidebooks serving as writing pads, and a box with a magnetic closing mechanism that stores nicely on your shelf.
Arrowhead Stadium
Parks: Roll & Hike is a 1-4 player roll-and-write game that takes 20-30 minutes to play, less if you are playing solo. Over the course of three rounds and 12-15 turns in total, players detail their journey through one of six real-world national parks by selecting dice from a rolled pool and scribbling notes in their Logbook.
By this point in the life cycle of roll-and-write tabletop games, one probably has a feel for what happens during games where dice are chucked and symbols are crossed out on a sheet of paper. Parks: Roll & Hike is no different. There are set collection elements, in the form of wildlife symbols that need to be crossed to get benefits in other parts of the Logbook. There is a wild symbol—binoculars—that offers opportunities to trigger other sections, too. Water symbols can be collected to score based on the highest value of completely-filled water columns.
My favorite part of the Logbook is the Journal section, where players can draw one of the game’s four symbols—Forests, Mountains, Meadows (represented by a flower) and Arrowheads. Arrowheads serve as the game’s catch-all symbol for tracking the national park-specific icon aligned with the park used in the current game (such as a picture of arches for Arches National Park, for example). This is important because, as players select more journal symbols matching previously drawn pictures, they get to scribble a line in each mini journal icon in their guidebook.
This leads to a really fun-looking result by the time games of Roll & Hike wrap up: it’s almost as if I really did go on a trip where I scribbled a bunch of notes about the sights I took in during a recent vacation. Kudos to the design team for building up a fun way to make things feel even more thematic.
Turns are quick. A pool of five dice are rolled, with four regular white dice and one die known as the “Lead Hiker Die” that triggers the end of a round plus the movement of a group hike token that progresses the game forward. On their turn, a player can select a white die for free, or select the Lead Hiker Die for one “sun”, a spendable resource that is used in a variety of ways. Players note the symbol on their selected die and make guide book adjustments accordingly. When a player selects the Lead Hiker Die, they must pay a fee in suns based on the number of other white dice remaining in the pool before the group hike token moves forward.
After more scribbling by all players (based on the symbol appearing on the token sitting on the next trail space), the active player that selected the Lead Hiker Die gets another minor bonus before the process is repeated for a new round. When the group hike token reaches the end of the trail, water tokens are scored and “Sunset” actions are taken if players are eligible to do so.
After three rounds, the game is over, and in addition to totaling up water a third time, players get points for other set collection elements and possibly a condition listed on the national parks card used for the current game.
Delightful, Not Wow
“That was delightful,” one of my family members said after a game of Parks: Roll & Hike.
I agreed. The game is a comfy stroll through the tabletop woods. I didn’t compliment myself very often for a series of overly clever decisions, as I have done with other combo-rich roll-and-writes such as Joan of Arc: Orleans Draw & Write, Dinosaur Island: Rawr ‘n Write, or the granddaddy of the roll-and-write category, the That’s Pretty Clever! series designed by Wolfgang Warsch.
But it feels like that is what Parks: Roll & Hike was going for—a very approachable roll-and-write game in a handsome package that PARKS junkies would appreciate.
In that way—understanding its core audience—Parks: Roll & Hike is a home run. I never got up from the table saying “Wow!”, but I always enjoyed playing. I generally went after wildlife symbols if I rolled them, and whenever I could add a new symbol to my journal area, I did so. That meant I could scribble notes each time a turn ended and the entire table could get a point for scribbling a new entry when the matching Landmark token (the tokens on each trail space) came up. I never prioritized water symbols since the initial point yield is so low, but through other game effects, water will probably score a few points during the Sunset phase.
In other words, I didn’t really feel like the design allowed for significant amounts of creativity. Most of my games played out the same way, and save for the variability in national park cards, Parks: Roll & Hike is a breezy time at the table and serves a gateway-adjacent roll-and-write you can slip in front of or after almost any kind of game, for almost any kind of audience.
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