Around the World in 80 Days
- Board's Eye View
- 16 minutes ago
- 3 min read
There have been many board game adaptations of Jules Verne's novel Around the World in 80 Days; in 2026 David Parlett even re-themed his classic Hare & Tortoise (Gibsons) game as a version of Around the World in 80 Days (Purple Brain Creations). With so many designers attracted to the theme you might think it would be hard to come up with an original take but Eloi Pujadas and Alex M Sanguino have done just that with this title from Looping Games.
This is a race game for 2-4 players where you'll be selecting a mode of travel (train, ship or balloon), paying its cost in money and days taken, and travelling the distance indicated on the card. You're playing on a map of the world but it's entirely up to you which route you follow in the journey east from London, around the world and arriving back in London. Trains travel only over land, ships only on water but balloons can traverse land and sea; they are slow and expensive, however... Sometimes you might have to overpay in time and money because a card giving you just the right length simply isn't available to you in the display.
When you take a transport card, you mark on a 'roll & write'-style map sheet the distance indicated. Tho' you can choose any route, there are points to be earned for traversing indicated areas and you'll need to stop off at various locations en route in order to earn the money to continue your journey. Adding to the Jules Verne theme, you can also pick up en route characters from the novel. Their cards will give you a bonus; for example, a discount when using specific modes of transport. There are also adventure cards set out randomly at the start of each game. These refer to other Jules Verne stories but add locations that give a reward to the first player to visit them.
Because you have a completely free choice of where you go, this is effectively a sandbox game. You can choose to race from London around the world to London as quickly as possible, stopping off or detouring only as much as you need in order to pay your way. Alternatively, you might choose deliberately to visit more places, prolonging your journey (tho' not beyond 80 days!) in order to rack up a higher points score. There's a worthwhile bonus for getting back to London first but that may not be sufficient to guarantee you the win over players that have taken a more leisurely but points-scoring scenic route.
The one pitfall in this novel pen & paper, 'roll&write'-style game is that it doesn't come with a ruler. Players will be naturally tempted to use the transport cards to mark the distance they can move and then trace their pen against the card edge. Dont! If you do that, you'll probably find you've marked your cards. Our advice at Board's Eye View is to slip a little six-inch ruler into the box and make sure players use that to precisely measure the distances shown on the cards, marking the corresponding end points on their map and then using the ruler to ensure a straight line is drawn between your start and end points. This is a game with tons of replayability - but not if you spoil the cards!
