Game Wire Review
Patrick Korner
March 2004
USA

Have you ever wanted to travel to Africa? Maybe gaze up in wonder at the pyramids? Ride the Blue Train? A trek up Mt. Kilimanjaro would be fun, or how about a Kenyan safari? Well, courtesy of Out of the Box Publishing, here’s your chance to do exactly that – or at least imagine it! 10 Days in Africa, the latest entry in the company's 'GeoPlay' line, takes Alan R. Moon and Aaron Weissblum’s EuropaTour game (itself an upgrade on the venerable Rack-O) and shifts its focus to a more exotic African locale. The result is highly enjoyable and, dare I say, even educational. Wait! Before the painful images of other ‘educational’ games foisted upon you in years gone by come to mind, read on and see what this game is all about…

Description

10 Days in Africa is wonderfully simple. There’s a board, which (surprise, surprise!) depicts the African continent. Each clearly-marked country is in one of five different colors: blue, green, red, yellow and orange. To go with the board, there are a series of cards – one for each country (except a few key central ones like Chad and Niger which have two) as well as Jeep and Airplane cards.

The object of the game is to arrange a set of 10 cards such that you can make an uninterrupted trip over all 10. The trip has to start in a country (not a Jeep or an Airplane) and has to end in one too. In between, you can do whatever you feel like – within reason. The easiest connection is between two adjacent countries – get those sitting next to each other on your rack and you’re home free. Other ways of getting around include using a Jeep to link two countries separated by a third (i.e. you use the Jeep to ‘pass through’ the middle country) as well as using an Airplane to travel from any country to another of the same colour. To keep things interesting, the Airplanes are colour-coded too – you’re only allowed to use a red plane to fly between two red countries, for example. The first player to finish his/her trip wins the game!

To start the game, each player draws 10 random cards and places them onto their racks in the order drawn – no ‘arranging’ your cards to make life easier! Once each player has their cards, the remaining cards are put in a face-down pile next to the board and the top three cards turned over. Those three cards form the start of the three discard piles. That’s it for set-up; you’re ready to play.

Gameplay is equally simple: On your turn, you get to draw a card. You can take the top card in the pile or you can pick the top-most card from any of the three discard piles. You then replace one of the cards in your rack with the freshly-drawn card; the unwanted card goes into whichever discard pile you choose. That’s all there is to it. Play continues until someone finishes their route, at which point the inevitable calls for a rematch ensue.

Comments

First things first: I think this is a fantastic game for two, a reasonable game for three, but only a mediocre game with four. So while I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend the game to anyone looking for a two-player diversion, I’d have to caution anyone hoping to play this against more than a single opponent. The problem is that the longer you have to wait between turns, the more likely it is that the one card you’re desperately hoping for will get a) grabbed by someone else or b) covered up on a discard pile by someone else. Since there really isn’t anything you can do between turns, getting shut out of what you need makes for a very frustrating game experience. This problem essentially disappears with two, making the game a lot more fun. It also makes it a lot faster (a typical two-player game lasts about 15 minutes), which lets the luck of the draw get evened out by playing a ‘best of three’ or ‘best of five’ series.

In the past, I’ve been critical of Out of the Box for their decidedly ‘low-tech’ approach to artwork and graphic design. Simple art and primary colors work well for preschoolers, but I’ve always felt that adult gamers deserved more adult-friendly artwork. Well, 10 Days in Africa is an example of getting it right. Using actual photographs on the box makes the game look much more inviting, and the minimalist artwork actually suits a geography game just fine – it looks like you’re playing on a map, which is, I think, the point. My only quibble is that the yellow and orange colors look a little too much alike – certainly nothing to impact game play in a big way, but worth noting nonetheless. Thankfully, none of the dozen-plus games I’ve played with my wife have ended in "But that’s the wrong colour plane, dear" chaos!

Speaking of components, the card racks are nice sturdy wooden ones that put the flimsy plastic ones turning up in other games these days to shame. They’re even etched with ‘Day 1’, ‘Day 2’, etc. A very nice touch that’s unexpected considering the very reasonable price of the game. The card stock used for the cards is nice and thick, too, which should keep the game looking great over repeated plays. Kudos to Out of the Box for doing a very nice job with the bits.

Bet you were wondering when I’d get around to the ‘educational’ part of the game, no? Well, apart from learning where the various African countries actually lie (okay, African countries circa 2004 – names and political boundaries are pretty fluid in that part of the world), each country card includes basic information about the country: its population as well as the name / location of its capital city. Want to know which country’s capital rejoices in the name Ougadougou? Play the game. 10 Days in Africa is simple enough for most youngsters to pick up pretty easily, and in an age when many school-age children can’t even find their own country on a map, teaching them something about political hot spots like Somalia and Rwanda is nothing to sneeze at.

Conclusions

For me, 10 Days in Africa is one of the strongest entries in Out of the Box’s line-up. Its companion game, 10 Days in the USA, is also worth checking out, but the African setting made this game the winner in my eyes. The combination of enjoyable game play, quality components and reasonable price is hard to beat. Quick and fun, 10 Days in Africa would make a worthy addition to any collection.
 

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