Preview: Clean Up the Streets (with Explosions for Good Measure) in Trash Collecting Game Karrier

Drive your cart through the streets, collecting trash, to clean up the city. Or at least the part of the city you care about. Because, of course, you want to clean up your streets faster than your opponents — so there’ll be bombs, explosions, and backstabbing as you try to set them back.

Currently on Kickstarter, Karrier is a fun, easy-to-learn game with lots of player interaction as you race to become the King Tyche.

Gameplay

The game board is set in the middle of the table. It shows fifteen large spaces, laid out in a three-by-five grid. Six of these spaces are character territories and start the game with five trash tokens each. Four of them are common territories and start the game with three trash tokens. The four edge spaces are free territories and start without trash, while the center space also starts without trash. Each player selects a character and places their player piece on that character’s territory. Each player also takes a carriage card.

On your turn, you start by drawing an action card. Your maximum hand size is four. If you draw a fifth card, you must discard one. You may then perform the clean action. For the clean action, you can take anywhere from zero to four trash tokens on your current space and place them on your carriage card. Your cart cannot hold more than four trash tokens.  Next, you may choose to move one space. You may not move diagonally. If you move onto a space that has trash tokens, you must pick up a trash token. If this would cause you to go over your maximum carry load on your cart, then you cannot move there. Only an action card will allow you to move to a space if it would exceed your carry load.

After choosing whether or not to move, you may then play any number of action cards in your hand. Actions cards often will allow you to perform special actions such as moving trash tokens from your carriage card to an opponent’s, moving extra spaces, or preventing an opponent from moving on his turn. After you finish playing cards, your turn ends.

When your player piece is on the center space, you can move on your turn to the sacred altar. You then attempt to clear the trash from your carriage card. For each piece of trash you are carrying, you roll one die through the dice tower. If you roll an O you get to remove the trash token from the game. If you roll an X, the trash token stays on your carriage card. After you finish rolling for all your trash, your player piece is returned to your character’s territory.

If your cart ever exceeds four pieces of trash, it goes boom. There are also some action cards that will make carts go boom. When your cart goes boom, all trash is dropped at the location your player piece is currently on, except if you are on the center space when you go boom, in which case all the trash is moved to your character’s territory.

The first player to clear their character’s starting territory of all trash and make it back to the sacred altar with an empty carriage card, wins the game. If the action card deck runs out before this happens, then the player with the least amount of trash tokens on his character territory and carriage card wins the game.

Review

Karrier is a lot of fun. Its strength lies in its player interaction. You’re constantly butting heads, playing cards against one another, developing feuds, and trying to set one another back. Trash jumps between carts frequently, and booms are constantly erupting.

Despite all the player interaction, the rules and gameplay itself remain simple and easy to learn. This makes for a game that’s quite easy and enjoyable to get into, with fast turns that keep things moving along at a nice pace.

The fact that you need to roll to get rid of your trash, and then make it back again to the shrine once you’ve cleared it all, ensures that victory is never certain. You can be sure all the players will be trying to stop you while keeping an eye out that no one else slips by to victory. The use of your action cards is key: how you use them, and on whom.

The latter half of the game remains tense and unpredictable no matter how far ahead someone pulls. There’s also a nice range of abilities on the action cards, and since you never know what a player might be holding, you can never be certain what they’ll do. Set an opponent back at your own risk! They might easily retaliate.

While we played a prototype, we were already impressed by the quality of the components and the general aesthetic of the game. The player pieces are nice and chunky, the dice tower works well for the suspense of the trash rolls, and the artwork and general look of the game is quite lovely.

We thoroughly enjoyed Karrier. A nice blend of strategy and luck, the game has a nice flow to it. It’s a great moment when you manage to make a player go boom just as they’re about to visit the sacred altar, or you manage to dump trash on their starting territory with a cleverly played movement card and a triggered boom. Players who don’t enjoy 'take-that' games might want to look elsewhere, but otherwise this is a Kickstarter that is well worth checking out.

Pros: Artwork and components, ease of learning, lots of player interaction, victory is not guaranteed

Cons: Players who do not enjoy ‘take-that’ might find too much of it here

Disclosure: this preview is a paid promotion that is based on our evaluation of an unpublished prototype of this game, which is subject to change prior to publication.