Pyramid Review
Steam Tunnel
Published by Cheapass Games
Designed by James Ernest
48 cards & instruction sheet; $4
Simultaneously released with Light Speed, Steam Tunnel is the latest game from Hip Pocket Games, the tiny division of the Cheapass Games empire that publishes small games at perfectly small prices. Like the first four titles from Hip Pocket Games -- Agora, Cube Farm, Nexus, the new Light Speed and the re-packaged The Very Clever Pipe Game -- this new release is another card game that comes packaged in a small ziplock bag with its rules on a single folded sheet of paper.
Steam Tunnel is a strategy game for between two and five players that consists of 48 cards; four of these are Point Cards and the rest Tunnel Cards. As is traditional with Cheapass, players need to supply their own parts; in this case, the game requires 20 colored stones for each player and also a means of recording everyone's score at the end of the game.
Ostensibly, Steam Tunnel is set within the bowels of Io, within a steam driven titanium mine, in the year 2185. In actuality it is an excuse for players to compete for control of the tunnels or pipes, and thus win the game. Their aim is to build as long a tunnel as is possible and have its ends connected to numbered ends on the Point Cards. The longer the tunnel, the more points there are available to the players. Essentially, game play consists of flipping over cards laid in a grid and placing stones to control the tunnels depicted on the cards.
At the beginning . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: April 11, 2003
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