Race To The Raft arrived at my door Monday, July 17th 2023: I know this date exactly because my friend Kurt reached out to me to ask: “Did you back this?” the day it arrived! I absolutely did back it! It was Kickstarter back in November 2022: see here. This arrival is fantastic because the Kickstarter promised delivery in September 2023, and here it is 2 months early! High five to Frank West!

Race To The Raft is a cooperative tile-placement game for 1-4 players taking 40-60 minutes. Honestly, that time can be either way short or way too long: there are so many variables that will affect the length of the game, that length should be taken with a grain of salt.

Components and Gameplay

Players work together to try to save the cats! Note that no one is playing a particular cat, you are just working together to save the group of cats! (Did you know a group of cats is called a clowder of cats?) So, save the clowder of cats!

There is a giant fire on the island that the cats live on, so the players must move all the cats to the raft before the island fire consumes them! See above. All cats must be saved (collectively) to win the game!

This is a tile-placement game: generally players play a tile (square cards, also called pathway tiles, see above) on their turn to try to make a path some some cats(s).

On your turn, you will get three cards (six in a solo game), but you get to choose any three from the four piles. Note that each pile notates the “frequency” of path type! The amount of color on the back of the card denotes the distribution of color! For example, the circle deck (above) is likely (33%) to have a lot of red path, likely (33%) to have a lot of ocean path, less likely to have some desert and grass path (17%). The back of the card gives you the odds that your tiles will have certain path types! The circle deck has NO purple, so you know you wouldn’t want cards from this deck when you are trying to construct purple paths!

The path colors are important because a cat can only traverse a path of its color: see above as the purple cat can take the purple path all the way to the raft!

If you do play a pathway tile on your turn, you must play a fire polyomino at the end of your turn! The cost of your setting a path is to spread the fire further! See the polyomino tile above.

The bag you draw the fire tiles is surprisingly big! (Which is great: the Sub Terra II bag was a little too small for its tiles).

This is also a limited communication game: you can only speak at certain times (basically when someone is NOT playing), but you can use certain tokens to “speak up” if needed:

Playing the cat token (above) allows to say “Meow” at any time. More useful, playing the “green girl” token allows you to speak up even when you can’t normally talk. The “Meow” token is pretty funny, because usually you play it to indicate you are worried about a placement (either pathway tile or file polyomino) so you sound like a mad cat!

The other action a player can do on their turn is to “move a cat” by discarding a card: see above as we moved the red cat to the raft.

When you move a cat, you exhaust it it so it can’t move that turn (until everyone has played all their cards … if you really need to, you can move it again if you discard two cards). When you move a cat, you don’t immediately pull a fire polyomino: only after you have moved four cats …. so you can defer, at least for a few turns, the drawing of a fire polyomino by just moving a cat. Of course, you can’t win the game until all cats have moved to the raft!

If, at any point, you can’t legally play a pathway card, you lose, or if you can’t play a fire tile legally to the map (because there’s no space), you lose.

If all cats make it to the raft, you and your group win!

The components to this game are first rate: the cardboard is thick, the cards are linen-finished, the boards are colorful, the cats are cute! The components don’t quite fit back into the box very well: the huge bag of fire polynominos, while great for play, make it harder to close the lid!

Rulebook

So, I have the Kickstarter version which has three books. The rulebook, the campaign book, and the kickstarter pack book!

The Kickstarter book just tells you what’s different from the base game: this is really great that they did this: this keeps the retail version clean, but gives the kickstarter backers a clear indication what’s special!

Basically, the plastic cats minis, the wooden tokens, and some special island boards are the special pieces for only the Kickstarter version. The special boards are used in campaigns found “only in” the Kickstarter book.

There is a campaign book: this describes many, many different layouts of the island and cats to save!

“Wait, wait, this is a campaign game?” Not really? Campaign implies you have some state saved from a previous session/game. Strictly speaking, I guess your scoreifrom the previous game is the shared state, but even that’s a stretch. This is more of a scenario-based game: the campaign book (probably should be called Scenario Book ) shows configurations of the island, fire, and cats where you have to save the cats. It’s just the set-up for a “save the cats puzzle”. It’s pretty cool, as there are a lot of scenarios that get increasingly difficult.

The rulebook proper is good, if not great. We’ll get to why it’s not great, but we’ll concentrate on why it is good first.

It has a nice intro up front: everything is a big and colorful and easy to read.  Right away, you kow what this game is.

 

The components page describes and names the components well: see above.

The set-up is well described and presented:  It spans two pages in an easy-to-lay out book.  So easy to get going!

I liked the rulebook, but I wish there were summary card. The limited communication rules, although reasonably well specified, have lots of weird starts and stops that really should have summarized on a summary card. See he cooperative mode below for more discussion of that.

Solo Play

This game has a fantastic solo mode: Thank you for following Saunders’ Law!  The real difference is that the solo player gets six pathway cards (see above) at the start of their turn (rather than 3), but three they can see and three in standby (see below).

After the solo plays a pathway card (moving a cat or placing a pathway tile on the board), they take one of the cards from standby.  Basically, the solo player will play six cards total in a round, with access to (at most) three at a time.

I love this game solo! It presents a great little puzzle for the solo player. I am really glad I played it solo a bunch of times before I taught it to my friends, because I realized all the little spaces where I messed up the rules.

• I am embarrassed how many games I played before I realized you have to draw fire polyomino every turn you place a pathway card!  “Gee, this game is easy!”  Ya, if you don’t draw fire!
• Fire polyominos must be placed next to some other fire space
• Pathway tiles can be placed ANYWHERE, as long it doesn’t cover fire, a cat, or overhang the main board.  That ANYWHERE qualifier reminds you to play more strategically and build paths backwards, and forwards (not just starting where a cat starts).

It’s not that this game is hard to learn/teach: on the contrary, the basics are very easy! The issue is that the rulebook needs just a few tweaks.

Choices

What makes this game great (yes, I used the G word) is that you have so many choices! The player really feels like he/she has a lot of agency! There’s agency in so many places:

• Playing Pathway cards: when you play the card, you can play it in any orientation and anywhere on the board (except for covering file,cats, or hanging).  This means you can choose to work on the path backwards or forwards or even in the middle!  And whatever orientation you want!  There’s so many places you can play!
• Choosing Pathway cards: When you choose three cards for your hand, you can use information on the backs to inform your choices!  While we loved Mists Over Carcassonne, you could only take “some random tile” when it was your turn: by giving the player some frequency information (encoded in color strips), players have some choice/some agency!
• Placing Fire Polyominos: When you place a fire polyomino, you block some moves on he map for your and your future comrades.   You get the choose, to a certain extent, what paths gets blocked!  
• Moving Cats: Many times, you may move a cat to clear a section of the board for fire polyominos, sometime you move a cat because you have bad pathway cards, and you are trying to mitigate the fires, sometimes you need to move the cat twice … and you can!

There is a delicious back and forth between trying to keep paths opens by where you play pathway tiles and where you DON’T play fire polyominos!  This tension makes you feel like everything you do matters.  And it does, it really does!  The third game, I realized I had hosed myself by placing a fire polyomino in such a way that it precluded any more pathway cards at the location!

The amount of choice in this game makes this game great. 

Cooperative Mode

Cooperative mode worked well, and we had fun, but there were some issues.

For one, there are “no communication” rules that seem a little draconian. Basically, players can talk all they want at certain times and can’t communicate at all during other times. The rules for “no communication“, although fairly well-specified in the rulebook, seem to have to starts and stops that really need to be denoted much better. I wish that there were a summary card which showed this is some graphical detail, or summarized when you can talk/can’t. We found ourselves “accidentally” cheatting because the “no communication” rules seem chaotically specified. I think there just needs to be a simplified overall rule that describes when you can talk.

I think the “no communication” rules can be summarized more succinctly. Here’s my attempt:

Once any transaction has started (drawing cards, playing a tile, playing fire, moving a cat), all communication ceases until the transaction has ended. Players are allowed to communicate as much as they want outside those transactions.

I really think a summary card per player describing the “no communication” rules could help tremendously.

Let’s be clear: the “no communication” rules keep the game moving so each player feels like they have agency on their turn to play their cards. Said another way, the “no communication” rules keep the Alpha Player at bay (much like King of Monster Island rules help keep the Alpha Player in check). My groups don’t tend to have that problem, but I do get why this rule is here.

One other problem that came up during play is that you want to “try” your tiles on the board. However, the game does NOT allow you to fully share your pathway card info with other players: You are only allowed to share your card info fairly obliquely. “I have a lot of green” is fine, but “I have a straight-across green” is too much. So, imagine, it’s your turn: you can’t communicate, and you aren’t allowed to show what cards are in your hand. But, the best way to proceed sometimes it try rotating a few of your tiles and see how they actually fit on the board … in front of everybody … which means strictly speaking you are giving away info about your tiles to the other players! You really can’t do that, strictly speaking, but we did and I suspect most people will! It’s natural to want to try some tiles out!

I think this easy to get around: “If someone is trying tiles on the board, please look away so you don’t cheat and get extra information.” And I think this needs to be stated! I think everyone will want to try tiles. … I think if players feel like they can’t “try tiles on the board manually” (because a strict interpretation of the rules will preclude it), that will take away from their enjoyment of the game. This is easy to get around: just look away.

One final thought, this is cooperative game. If you feel like the limited communication rules are stifling your cooperation, consider backing off. I am worried some people will hear the limited communication rules and say “No Thanks”, but I think they can still enjoy the game! I think the intent of the limited communication rules are to give each player agency and to avoid the Alpha Player. (I know the Communication tokens help this, but maybe that’s still too much for some people). I think as long as you obey the spirit of the limited communication, I think it’s okay to help each other out occasionally.

The entire purpose of a cooperative game is to play with your friends and have fun: if you need to relax the limited communication rules slightly, I think the game will still work great.

So Much Stuff

We haven’t really gotten into it, but there is even more stuff in the box! There is an advanced mode (which has Bad News cards), there are new rules for Rescuing Friends, Close to, Oshax, Symbol Objectives, and even more! If you think you might get tired of the base game, do not worry! There are tons of new things to add the game! It almost feels like teh base game comes with a bunch of expansions already baked it. Now, I haven’t played them yet, but knowing there are future refinement really make me think “I am not going to get tired of this game!”

Conclusion

Race To The Raft is a great game! I think it might take the #1 spot on my Top 10 Cooperative Tile Placement Games! There are so many delicious choices ! Each player has so much agency in laying their tiles, fire polyominos, and cat movements that they feel engaged and relevant the entire game!

When you win, it feels great! You saved the cats!

I think the solo game absolutely fantastic and would give it a 9.0 or 9.5 out of 10. It was a fun puzzle, and there were so many levels of difficulty,I know it will have tons of replayability in the future as I get better and better. There is so much choice, I enjoyed every precious decision!

The cooperative mode is good, but the limited communication rules might need some slight adjustments. A player summary card describing theses limited communication rules would go such a long way towards clearing some of that confusion. And there needs to be something said about physically trying tiles in front of everyone: “Just look away” seems the easiest response to keep the rules lawyers happy. Race To The Raft is still good cooperatively, but you might need to slightly adjust the limited communication rules to work well with your group: I am very worried strict interpretations of limited comms will make some people (who would really enjoy the game otherwise) turn away. I would give this 8/10 for cooperative mode.

This is a great game. I loved it and it will absolutely make my Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2023. My only real complaint is that the game is in dire need of player summary cards with the gameflow, limited communications rules, and placement summaries. Maybe by the time you read this, there will be such a beast on Board Game Geek in the files section.