Preview: Pinpoint a Location Using Creative Text Messages in Where's My Ride?

You need to find your rideshare driver but the app is going bonkers and you can only send short texts, while the driver only has a few emojis at his disposal. Will you be able to find him before you both end up with a one-star rating?

From Slugfest Games and currently on Kickstarter, Where’s My Ride? is a cooperative clue-giving party game for 2-7 players.

Gameplay

One player is the driver and the other players are the riders. The driver draws a location card and looks at it. This is the location that the riders are trying to find to meet their driver. The driver then draws eight more location cards, shuffles them with the first one, and lays them all face-up on the center of the table. The driver will then draw five emoji tokens.

Each round, two riders will each draw two text cards. Without conferring, both players will choose one text card to play, discarding the other face-down. Text cards all say random, short lines such as '5-second rule', ‘teeny tiny pencils’, or even simply 'chaos'.

The driver will then place one or more emoji tokens on one or more of the text cards played this round. When he is done, the driver draws back up to five emoji tokens.

All the riders may then discuss what they believe the emojis signify on any of the texts and which location they think they point towards. Riders may choose to guess a location. If they are correct, everyone wins the game.

If riders did not guess the location, one rating tile is revealed if they did not make a guess, or two if they made an incorrect guess. There are 10 rating tiles in total. If players draw all four broken star tiles before guessing the correct location, everyone receives a one-star rating and loses the game.

First Impressions

Where’s My Ride? follows a format that is fairly familiar, with one player using a limited communication system to give clues to point others towards a particular card, but it manages to put a fresh spin on the format and feel original in its own right. The use of only emojis for communication can be quite tricky, especially since the emojis available to the driver are chosen at random. It’s also interesting that the riders have some control over what clues they’ll be getting as they choose between which text cards to play. This can help players focus on deciding between two locations or allow them to discard a card that they feel covers ground they’ve already established.

There’s humor in the sheer randomness of the text cards themselves, and that’s part of the charm of the game. The communication system that players are restricted to is so much fun to work with and it’s interesting to hear what the driver was thinking afterward with each emoji use.

You also are never sure of exactly how many more rounds you have left, as you never know what rating tile will be drawn next. This leads to a slight push-your-luck element as you decide whether to risk a guess and potentially have to draw two tiles or hold off and see how the next round plays out.

The game also has several helpful variants, such as one that removes some of the rating tiles to increase the difficulty and another that allows three riders to play text cards during a round to lower downtime in games with a higher player count.

We didn’t get to play with a physical prototype, instead playing the game on Tabletop Simulator, so we can’t speak to component quality. However, we did like the design of the artwork, making the location cards look like phone maps and texts look like actual text messages on a phone screen. We would have liked a few more locations included, but this is largely because we enjoyed the game so much. All the ways the different locations confused the issue when on the table in different combinations made us want to see even more of it!

This game might not land as well with players who are not as tech-savvy, as they might not enjoy the emoji communication system, but we found Where’s My Ride? to be a unique take on an already enjoyable genre. Check it out on Kickstarter.

Pros: Fun graphic design, unique communication system, good range in the text cards, game variants

Cons: May not appeal as much to less tech-savvy players, we would have liked even more location cards

Disclosure: this preview is based on our first impressions of a digital prototype of the game. The game is subject to change prior to publication. We received a modest payment to write this article.