The Oregon Trail (card game)

The object of The Oregon Trail card game is to follow the Oregon Trail from Independence, Missouri, to the Willamette Valley, Oregon, with a party of two to six players.[2] Players write their names, or "frontier name" aliases, on a roster. On the back of the roster are tombstones, which can be customized when players die, as in the original video game.[5] Players play trail cards to progress, with the players needing to play 50 cards to win. Each trail card ends on the left, right, or middle of the card, and a subsequent trail card must be placed to smoothly connect to the previous one. Of the 56 trail cards, 46 have consequences associated with them, such as rolling a die to cross a river, which can result in the player losing a supply card or dying.[5] Other trail cards require the player to draw a calamity card, which represent accidents such as snakebites, dead oxen, typhoid, or dysentery. There are sixteen unique calamity cards, with one in eight resulting in instant death.[5] Calamity cards that do not result in instant death can be remedied by supply cards, of which there are seven different types, including clean water, ammunition, and medicine. Other trail cards represent forts or towns, allowing the player to resupply. All players win if one or more players are still alive after the 50th card is played. A successful game should take around 30 minutes to play.[5]

On the tabletop-gaming forum BoardGameGeek, The Oregon Trail card game has a rating of 5.0 out of 10, with 286 ratings, as of 13 December 2016. According to BoardGameGeek's Rating wiki page, a game with a score of 5 is described as being "Average. No significant appeal, take it or leave it.".[6]

Writing for Ars Technica, Megan Geuss stated that some cards have ambiguous instructions or are hard to understand, but that the cooperative aspect is "refreshing" and that players in her group "weren't bored by the end".[7] She concluded that winning the game is "really hard" and that her group never did.