Joyride Duel: Next Gen

Joyride

Come on join the Joyride everybody, get your tickets here. So begins most versions of the song Joyride by Roxette. You may be asking yourself: “Self!” You ask, “Aside from being a great song by one of Dave’s favourite bands, does the song Joyride have anything to do with the game Joyride?” The answer: you bet your sweet tailpipe it doesn’t. Not a thing beyond the title. In fact, it doesn’t even properly match up with the title, since today we are looking at Joyride Duel: Next Gen. The two-player standalone expansion to Joyride. But it’s in my head, so it goes on the page.

Picture this: The “battle mode” in Mario Kart.  Do you remember that? Driving around an arena hunting your opponents? Now make THAT the race mode.  Driving around a semi-open world arena, racing through checkpoints from any direction, collecting items and using them against the other racers. Chaos. Organized chaos, but chaos nonetheless. That will give you a decent idea of the Joyride games. I love it.

As I mentioned previously, Joyride Duel: Next Gen is a standalone expansion to the Joyride series. It includes a smaller double-sided board and only two cars. Being standalone, it also has all the item tokens and race flags to come up with your own tracks on top of the 12 included designs.

When I first opened Next Gen, I made the crazy decision to play a game against myself live on stream. I read the rules and was able to play a reasonably correct game. When I took a bit of extra time to read the rules again, I had them down pat. I soon taught the game to a friend and spent a good part of our game day playing.  The rules are detailed but sensibly straightforward. The biggest challenge was looking up certain details on the fly.  You see, the rulebook is split in two. Racing Rules & Regulations and the Race Guide. As long as you remember which detail is in which book, it works well. The Racing Rules appear to be the same as in the main Joyride game. This is not only cost effective but points out rules that impact more than two players (and Next Gen CAN be played with more players). The Race Guide includes everything specific to the two maps included in Next Gen. 

The Driving School map has limited board elements (some races add more) and is used, specifically, for the tutorial and less difficult track layouts. The Warehouse map includes permanent elements like Oil Leaks that mess with steering when crossed by cars and a Defence Grid that, when active, does damage to anything in the marked spaces at the end of the round. This is usually the players’ cars, but many items can be damaged as well. Almost all of the prebuilt race tracks are playable by two players (obviously) or with a third player. That’s right, unlike most games labelled “duel,” most of the prebuilt tracks can be played by three players with the addition of a single-car expansion (like the safari-themed Unleashed) or any of the cars from the original game.  To be honest, the game is scaled to the size of most toy cars. You wouldn’t have a Dashboard or ability tokens, but that’s an easy fix.

The unique cars are one of the greatest elements of Joyride. Every car is named and has its own individual set of ability tokens. Next Gen includes two cars: The Electric and The Learner. Each has three unique abilities that can be played during the game.

The Electric abilities are:
Auto Pilot– which allows the player to use the unlock dice for their Roll phase without rolling them.
Reroute Power– gives -1 to Lock moves of 2 or more. (Allowing for more control)
Polarity Shift– Ignores Reroute Power and gives +1 to all Roll and Lock moves.

The Learner abilities are:
Crunchy Gears– which allows the player to shift up or down exactly 3 gears when used.
Stall– after rolling but before moving a player may remove 1 rolled die and shift down.
Turn Signal– lets the player steer and move 1 space at the end of their turn. 

I think that the combination of precision skill and aggressive chaos makes Joyride one of my absolute favourite racing games. I’m looking forward to many more races and eventually, hopefully, even bigger races with Joyride: Survival of the Fastest.

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