Ticket to Ride Pocket
1-5
4+
15+
Ticket to Ride Pocket offers 4 different playing modes, all on the original US map: SOLO; PASS-and-PLAY on a single device; LOCAL play between multiple iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad devices over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi and a MULTI mode feature incorporating iOS Game Center asynchronous play support (on iOS 5).
It's the perfect “spur-of-the-moment” mobile gaming experience, making it possible to enjoy Ticket to Ride any time, anywhere!
Ticket to Ride Pocket includes:
- Multi Mode feature incorporating iOS Game Center asynchronous play support on iOS 5
- SOLO, PASS-and-PLAY and LOCAL network play
- Ticket to Ride for iPad compatibility over LOCAL networks
- Four distinct AI personalities to compete against in SOLO mode
- 30 uniquely fun SOLO Game Achievements and Leaderboards
- USA 1910 expansion available as in-game purchase
- Apple Game Center support
- 90 second tutorial video
Ticket to Ride Pocket is compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPod Touch (3rd & 4th generation. Requires iOS 4.2 or later.
Store Links:
- Ticket to Ride Pocket for iPhone and iPod touch - $1.99
User Reviews (12)
Add a Review for "Ticket to Ride Pocket"
You must be logged in to add a review.
I am, admittedly, behind on the technology revolution. I do not carry a smartphone (I’m far too cheap for a data plan), and am tempted to drop my old flip cellphone – until I’m reminded I don’t have a house phone. It’s likely I’m far from the targeted user for most apps, though I have received an iPod Touch as a gift, and I do like boardgames,
And, I do like Ticket to Ride: Pocket.
Being relatively new to using the iPod Touch, I was highly skeptical of how well a boardgame would work on it. When I first tried it, I had heard of great boardgaming apps, but normally the stories at the time were primarily based on iPad games. I’ve had countless (well, countless by me, I’m sure the iPod probably tracks it somewhere…) hours of fun (and a little frustration going after some Achievements) with Ticket to Ride: Pocket.
Game Play
Ticket to Ride: Pocket is exactly as its name implies, a version of the Ticket to Ride boardgame that you can carry around (with your iPhone/iPod Touch). All of the expected gameplay is there, with no rules tweaks to confuse the gaming veterans.
You’re still drawing the same train cards to complete the same routes, with the same board, but with no shuffling needed (which is great as they managed to make the cards even smaller than the cardboard version!)
The tutorial will get people new to the game ready to go quickly, no need to open the (small) rulebook.
My Thoughts
I’m still amazed how playable Ticket to Ride, with its large board, is on an iPod Touch. The graphics are sharp, and the layout very readable. I assumed that I would spend much of the game zooming in and out (a feature that exists – and Le Havre sorely lacks), but in reality I almost never need to. The card display and routes are well designed, allowing play without any worries of the small screen.
In fact, there are two regular gameplay features I really like in Ticket to Ride: Pocket that I miss in face-to-face games.
1) Highlighting of destination cities – During your turn, the cities you have destination cards for are highlighted, allowing you to see at a glance how far you are from completing everything. There’s no need to keep looking back at your tickets.
The lack of need to look at tickets is a good thing, as I find scrolling through the destinations I already have to be more of a pain than I would like. This is a spot where the limited screen space comes into play. Thankfully, the highlighted city endpoints make up for this more difficult usability.
2) Opponents last action/cards taken shown – There are small sections at the top of the screen showing each opponent with a good deal of information (cards in hand, trains remaining, destination tickets held). One great thing is the display of what a player did on their last turn. If they took cards, which cards they took are shown (face up cards’ color are shown, face down cards are shown as face down). If they claimed a route, an icon shows this and the trains on that route are animated, and getting new tickets is also identified.
I’m also a fan of the Achievements. When I play video games, especially RPGs, I tend towards trying to complete everything. The Achievements give me this feel (though the numbers for Games Played Achievements are a little ridiculous). The Achievements give you something to shoot for, and keep the game interesting as they can force you out of your typical play style.
The AI is good enough to keep you interested. Four different versions are nice, ranging from nearly incompetent to strong enough that if you don’t pay attention, they can grab victory. The AI levels are not only based on difficulty, but the play style changes as well, making it feel like you’re against different types of opponents.
For the price, I’d highly recommend anyone with a device that will play this app to give it a try. From time to time it will drop to $0.99, or even free, so if you track apps, add this one to your list. Whether using the Pass-and-Play at the airport or on the train, or filling 10 minutes while waiting in line, Ticket to Ride: Pocket has proven itself a great use of $2.
I purchased Ticket to Ride for iOS one day when a friend and I were sitting in a theater waiting for the show to start. Instead of checking Facebook and watching those terrible ads, we were able to blast through a game of TtR in record time! We had tons of fun, and it was clear that the people behind us were absolutely jealous. The game plays just like the board game version, and we could be terribly snarky to each other while we created our railroads to victory. My experience suggests that this game has no flaws, and if you love the board game, you will also love this version.
A week later, I received a request to join a game with the same friend. That game dragged on for days, as we attempted to weave our turns into the frenzied daily routines. Since individual turns are so short in TtR, I was never satisfied having just one. I would sit, hoping my friend would play her turn so I could do something, anything else. Alack and alas, it was not to be.
Depending on how you choose to play the game, TtR Pocket is either my favorite or my least favorite board-to-iOS translation.
Imagine waiting in line at PAX or Origins. The event you want starts in twenty minutes, but you didn’t pack your games. Tell your friends to break out the smartphones and get to playing. Or maybe the pizza is just taking forever to show up. Play TtR Pocket. Ticket to Ride is an amazing game, and you are only doing yourself a favor by playing it when you get the chance. Finish your game in a short amount of time and go about your busy day.
However, if you are preparing to play a game against friends from across the country, I want you to think about the process of loading up this app simply to draw one Wild card. And then waiting half an hour to place two trains. And then half a day to draw two cards you don’t actually need. And after thinking about this process, consider any other alternative.
Again, TtR Pocket is a great little game. Just make sure you play it in the proper context!
I have not played very many board games converted over to mobile devices, but the production of this game is top notch in my book. There are a lot of things the developers took from the game and did right, and I think you will find very little they did wrong. Here is a little list of what I see…
PROS:
• The artwork is great. And this carries over from the game, but even more, they went the extra mile in the little things. For instance, each train as it is placed on the board has its own shadow and it positioned on the board. So a train going east has a different shadow from one heading northeast.
• There are lots of options for play. You can play by yourself, pass and play, play online, play with two bots, play with four. Whatever you choose.
• The bots are smart. They programed them to make good decisions. They know to take certain routes such as HOU to NO right away or you’ll have to pay for it later. The same with other routes.
• The bots are aggressive. And they will screw you. I have been screwed over by the bots way more times in the mobile game than in the real game. I’ve also seen them take routes that I can figure out why they took them, but this is a little more seldom
• Fast play is great. You can get a game in in just a few minutes. This is nice because it allows you to test out some different strategies that you may not try in a real game.
• The accomplishments are hard. There are a good number of accomplishments that seem really tough. For instance, don’t use one or two spaced routes. It can be hard and egg you to keep playing.
• Cheap, cheap, cheap
CONS:
• Don’t care for drawing tix. From a usability point of view its one too many clicks to draw new tickets. I know its small, but it kind of makes me crazy.
• Girlfriend yells at me for playing too much.
So obviously the pros far outweigh the cons here. This is a great little game that works for all sorts of people. Even people I know who are not big fans of Ticket to Ride enjoy the quick version on their iphone. If you’re wondering about if this would work for you go for it, you won’t be disappointed.
Side Note: It would be sweet if they released some of the additional maps, but some of different play mechanics would have to also be adjusted.
Introduction
Ticket To Ride Pocket is the iPhone implementation of the popular Ticket To Ride board game.
Both the board game and the app are from Days Of Wonder (and the app seems to be built in-house)
It is important to point out that this is an iPhone/iPod Touch specific version and is not optimized for iPad; there is a separate iPad version if that is your hardware of choice.
Ticket To Ride Pocket can currently be bought for $1.99 but has been seen before for $0.99 and even free. Within the app you can also acquire the Ticket To Ride USA 1910 expansion for $0.99.
Gameplay
Almost most reader will know the rules of Ticket To Ride, but I will still go through them.
The game plays on a map (in this case of the USA) with cities and railroad routes of different length connecting them.
The goal of the game is to score more points than your opponents (2-5 players total with this app). There are several ways to score points but all are based on claiming routes with your allocated 45 train tokens.
A route between two cities will be of a specific color (among 8) or grey, and will have a specific length. To claim a route you will need as many train cards of the specific colors as the length of the route. For grey routes you can use any color train cards, but all must be of the same color. There are also wildcard trains (locomotives) that can be used as any color. Each time you claim a route between two cities, depending on the length of the route, you get victory points (2 for length 2, 15 for length 6 for example). When you claim a route, you discard the required amount of train cards and place the required amount of train tokens on the map to show that the route has been claimed.
At the beginning of the game each player will also have to choose a minimum of 2 out of 3 destination cards. Each of those represent two cities and a number of points: if at the end of the game the two cities can be linked by the routes claimed by the player, he will score the points, if not they will be deducted form his total points.
The last way to score points is at the end of the game, the player with the longest continuous path will gain an additional 10 VP.
During the game, for each turn, each player will be able to chose 1 out of 3 actions: claim roads on the map with his available trains cards, acquire train cards or get new destination cards (same rules as starting destination cards apply).
Trains cards (colored and wildcards) are randomized in a draw pile and the top 5 are revealed. When acquiring train cards, the player can either chose two colored train cards, two cards from the top of the draw pile, one colored card and one from the top of the draw pile, or one locomotive. Using the draw pile gives you the chance to get locomotives while still drawing a total of two cards.
The last turn of the game starts when one player has only 2 or less train tokens left.
Implementation
The app gives you many options to play a game of Ticket To Ride.
You can play 2-5 players games. You can do so alone against multiple AI, pass and play mixing AI and human players, asynchronous online using Game Center and local wifi games.
There are 4 different AI but I am not sure if they represent different levels of difficulty or different play styles. Playing against a mix of them I have won and lost games probably a similar number of times and the winning AI was not always the same.
Online using Game Center you can play against a mix of friends and random opponents. I have not played enough random opponents to give a statistically relevant comment on game activity, but the few times I played against 1 or 2 random opponents, there was not much wait for the game to start.
The implementation of the game on the small screen is as good as it could be. The graphics and menu are beautifully matching the theme of the game and the user interface is intuitive: it is easy to see what is going on on the board and even easier to play your turn.
As stated in the introduction, this is an iPhone/iPod Touch only game and there is a separete iPad version as well as an iPhone version of Ticket To Ride Europe.
There is a handy tutorial to go through the rules of the game, and if more is needed (but I doubt it) you can also access the rules.
(I will detail a little more the differences between the iPad and iPhone version in the review of the iPad version to come in few days)
Verdict
A short version of the verdict would be: a great app of a great game.
The longer version:
The game Ticket To Ride is an easy to learn, difficult to master kind of game. It is easy to teach to non-gamers and although an experienced player will most likely beat a beginner, every player will still have fun. For experienced players the game can also be really strategic and interactive when they try to guess what others want to do and block them. I would put this game in the same category as Carcassonne: for beginners to advanced gamers, with more strategy and interaction as experience increases. I would however say the Ticket To Ride is little lighter.
Now for the app, this is a nearly perfect implementation; the graphics are great, the interface is easy to use and you can play in many different ways.
The issues I have with it are the lack of Universal Support (you will need to buy the game twice if you want to play on both iPhone and iPad) and the fact that there are no expansion maps (you need a separate app to play Ticket To Ride Europe). This last point is not a big issue but I find it more convenient to have all my Ticket To Ride needs in one app.
I highly recommend this app to anyone; newbies who want to discover Ticket To Ride (especially at the low price of this iPhone version) or gamers already fan of the game. However, if you are a gamer fan of the game and have an iPad, if you have to choose one, I would recommend the iPad version (see upcoming review of the iPad Version for more details).
Pros:
Great game presentation on the small screen
Great pace. I can play a single player game in 10 minutes.
Decent AI
Great game, obviously
Cons:
Menus are annoying. There is one screen to many to get to the game, and that screen is a constant advert to buy the Europe version and expansions.
Either both maps US + Europe or both the US map and 1810 expansion should have been included at the base price. I feel nickel and dimed once I get into the game.
W/O spending more, the single player replay diminishes.
But, pros really outweigh the cons. Recommended if you like the board game, for sure.
I just bought this yesterday and all I have to say is WOW! The interface is flawless, the game play true to the board game and the AI opponents are challenging. Definately worth my investment.
If you’re here I don’t have to tell you about how great a game Ticket to Ride is. This digital version is the next best thing to the physical board game.
I’ve played about 10 solo games so far and I can’t wait to play my next one. As I am getting up to speed (it’s been awhile since I’ve played) I watched the video and went through the Tutorial to freshen up on the rules and then jumped right in. I’m only playing 1 on 1 but the game supports upto 4 AI players. There is also Pass & Play, Local Multiplayer (device to device over wi-fi) and Multiplayer via the Game Center.
The in-app store has the the 1910 Classic, 1910 Mega, and 1910 Big Cities variants for $.99 – for all three.
If you already love Ticket to Ride and you’re considering picking up a new game for your phone, look no further.
My friend told me yesterday that Ticket to ride was currently free at the app store. I was always uncertain about ticket to ride, it seemed too simple to me, but hey a free game is a free game. I received so much more than I expected.
Not only is ticket to ride a great game itself, (which I may not have discovered without this app since I had convinced myself it was too simple and didn’t have any friends who owned it) but this is a beautiful adaptation. It comes with a great video, an extremely helpful tutorial, and fantastic animations that help you track your progress. As others have mentioned the AIs are competitive, and I have to struggle to keep up at times.
I love the asynchronous play option which is currently not available in the iPad version. This is going to be a lot more fun to have a couple games going with than words with friends.
Pros
A fun to play adaptation of a great game
beautiful graphics and animations
soothing music
it’s currently free
Cons
Screen size makes clunky fingers a problem at times
Some of the menus are not that attractive
You have to use iOS game center to play with your friends
It may no longer be free depending on when you look at this
Overall I’d say it’s still well worth the $1.99 when this app is no longer free. I hope you enjoy it.
This review will be short. Most people that have arrived at this review have likely played Ticket to Ride (the board game) and therefore a review of the board game version is redundant. What I’ll be reviewing here is the presentation and gaming experioence of TtR Pocket.
GAMEPLAY
The version I have is on my iPod. Obviously the game size is limited to the players screen. I found that even on the iPod, the game was presented in a size and format that was easy to view and the cards could be readily observed in the bottom of the screen with a number over each card to indicate how many of each colour was possessed. The music is very pleasant but can become irritating after repetetive play. The artwork is true to the game board and blue tooth linkage is very good for multiplayer mode.
This game plays much faster than the board game it represents as there is no set-up or take down. When playing solo, I can buzz through a game in about 20 minutes. That brings me to the last point. The fact that you can play this solo vs. the Apple device is worth its price alone. I find that this game comes out while at the coffee shop and waiting rooms at the doctors/dentists. Another boon is that my daughters can enjoy a game between devices while on long car trips.
If you have any reservations about making this small purchase for the program, don’t. You will never regret making the plunge into TtR Pocket!
Having owned Ticket to ride Europe in the past I was looking to get the original ticket to ride.
If you want some filler 1 player gaming well look no further than the Digital copy! You can play against 1 to 3 other computer run opponents. I don’t need to tell anyone how this plays as you ALL know!
Great scoring updating and a whistle when it’s your turned is sounded. The laying of the tracks can be a bit fiddly on the i-phone (which is what I play it on) but ok – It looks fantastic and is a really good conversion!
Really enjoy this. Recommended.
If I was going to have a game night though I think I’d play the physical board version.
Portable versions of games, especially digital ones, haven’t always inspired the greatest amount of confidence in gamers. They are usually slimmed down representations of their games namesake, that are barely even comparable, or clunky facsimiles that require the highest level of determination and stubbornness to control.
With touch devices such as the iPhone and iPad, this is no longer the case. By throwing out the keypads and buttons, you can touch the game pieces on the screen just as you would on your table. This opens up the ability to play the actual game portablely, not just the portable version of the game.
Ticket to Ride takes advantage of this and runs with it. This is the actual game. Sure, they have stream lined a few of the things here and there, but they haven’t changed it to a different thing. This feels like you have the board game right in front of you and it’s just as enjoyable. Sure, it will never replace the actual board game. The feel of the pieces, the setup, the actual cards in your hand, but this comes close. It’s a great alternative for when you don’t have room for the full spread.
If you like Ticket to Ride, it’s a real good bet you will like Ticket to Ride Pocket. It’s responsive, there is minimal unneeded animations, and it preserves the elements that made the board game so popular. It’s very affordable which makes this an even easier purchase. If you want to play a game of trains at your convenience, this is the game for you.
When Ticket to Ride went digital, they did it right! The controls are easy, it has exactly the same rules as the original game, and lots of digital additions make this a must-buy on any iPod. This version is even more addicting than the original board game. Being able to play against a computer means that I can play TtR without trying to get a group together. The AI is pretty good too. It even offers 4 different AI’s to play against, with different strategies/levels of difficulty. The expansion offers several different ways to play as well, the same ones as the 1910 expansion for the original ticket to ride. It is well worth the extra dollar. I only wish there was an expansion that would allow me to play the Europe, Switzerland, India, Asia, and/or Nordic countries maps. That would be great. I know it possible, because the iPad version does it… Being able to try for the achievements in the game keeps me coming back for more.
If you have an iPod, this is the best app you can get for it. I highly recommend it.
A must have for any ios Gamer. This implementation of Ticket to Ride gives you access to the game in a cheap and easy format. Play local, network, solo, or pass and play all while seeking out those elusive achievements (like score 240+ points!). It has it all (except many of the expansion maps which will hopefully come soon probably via in-app purchase).
Don’t walk, don’t run, but hop on your next available train to pick up this fabulous app!