SEVEN BRIDGES

Designer: Ronald Halliday | Publisher: Puzzling Pixel Games

Taken as I am with any games that claim a relaxing theme, Seven Bridges is, and there’s no pun intended here, right up my street. A ‘stroll-and-write’ game about having a nice walk in the historic Königsberg might not be everyone’s idea of a thrill ride, but sometimes we just want to be charmed by a game.

And we mostly are. The abstract map in Ordinance Survey colours of the city with loads of tiny boxes around it may be a little austere to some, but as we’re only really adding a single colourful line to our page when we attempt to have a nice stroll around the city, it soon becomes apparent that this is actually a carefully planned battleground.

Points in the game come from things like seeing the most landmarks, your longest route (and its number of right angles), and crossing the seven bridges themselves – and because of the layout of the streets, collecting points is a deeply engaging puzzle in itself. Players draft lovely wooden dice

that depict different lengths, turns, and crossing, and add them to their route each turn. Every landmark unlocks a bonus, whether that’s footpaths through parks, extra movement, or a cheeky dice allocation move that lets you decide which dice everyone’s getting this turn.

And it’s surprisingly fraught as you watch other players complete huge routes, unlock verdant paths, or do a switchback action across another bridge, netting them a slightly better points total at the end. The rules are so restrictive when it comes to this scribbled flaneur that someone else taking a dice you wanted can be fairly devastating. Which is a great feat for a game that was meant to be about having a nice wander about.

Visit for the promise of scenery, pleasant routing, and thoughtful upgrading, stay for the crunchy dice drafting and the puzzle of the streets.