Add in the Pencil Powers and the Shared Objectives, and you’ve got a game that’s a very different animal, every time you play. At the end of the game, players score 10 points for each of these objectives whose criteria are met.

Next Station: London makes for a fun puzzle for an afternoon or two, but I am having a hard time imagining a world where I play it 20-30 times. As well as documenting the sounds of the London Underground, by remixing and reimagining every sound it creates an alternative sound world based on the experience and memory of the iconic Tube. The main interaction between players here happens between rounds as you pass pencils around the table. Outside of the final comparison of scores, there’s not much here that provides an extroverted excitement. It’s hard trying to leave yourself enough room to get through subsequent rounds without messing with your current score.To my mind, Next Station London has just enough crunch for when you need a hit but not one that breaks your brain. Try not to draw too many lines that cut off other routes; you can’t cross anything you’ve already done.

There is only a single map included in the game, so all 200 sheets of paper feature the same problem to solve. And you could be forgiven for presuming that it plays too fast and seems too simple for there to be many strategies involved. The more I play, the more I analyse the map layout, and see the potential in gunning for different strategies. By this, I mean that previously drawn lines or decisions as to which direction to take your route, or even how to use a wild card, are much more likely to be the cause of an impasse than the map itself.

I don’t mind the solitaire aspect, but for many gamers, this will be a feature (or bug) to make note of. If you are playing this game with the family at the beach, the base game will be enough especially since you won’t play this more than a few times.

If you cannot reach a matching station from either end of your line, then you skip drawing that turn; you may also choose to skip drawing a line if you don’t like where it would go. The latest fast playing flip and fill game from Blue Orange Games and Coiledspring, this little magnetic box of hyper colour happiness has captured our hearts. Once you are used to the game, and you start to play with the pencil power cards and the shared goal cards; this also makes you approach each game in a different manner; different enough that I haven’t tired of it yet! You get a real sense of pride watching your increasingly colourful creation growing on the notepad in front of you. Plenty of game rules are now set up this way, so this may just be the concern of some gaming dinosaur who is out of touch with modern things.There are so many different ways of using the roll and flip mechanic to make games that all feel surprisingly different.

The highest score wins, with ties going to the player with the single highest Underground line score. Each round scores how many districts your route visits multiplied by the most stations you have in the busiest district.One rewards players for connecting to all five tourist destinations, while another grants a bonus for crossing the Thames six times during the game.