Joyride: Survival of the Fastest review — Let’s go for a spin

Joyride: Survival of the Fastest is a two to four player combat racing game. The goal is always to be the first to cross the finish line, usually through a two or three lap track. What sets it apart from most racing games is that you can cross checkpoints in any direction. There isn’t always one obvious way through the course. This can lead to cars heading in different directions and often colliding with each other, which is where the real fun begins.

Art and Components

I absolutely love the artwork for this game. Lots of bright colors and fast looking images. The details on the game board are really great. The game is really enjoyable to look at.

One issue with the color design involves the player boards. While they look great and are really detailed with a lot of character and color, it is difficult to tell which car belongs to which player board. This can be solved by flipping the player boards over. Many of the game components have colorblind friendly alternatives on their flip side, which is great. It just seems a little awkward that if you aren’t using those sides, then it can be difficult to match up the cars.

The quality of all the components in Joyride are excellent. The game board, player boards, player help and equipment information cards are all thick cardboard. The tokens used in the game are thick and usable. The dice are wooden with colors matching the cars. The cars themselves are thick wooden pieces with printed art on them. Like everything else in the game, they look amazing and are really fun to move around.

Like many people, I own a lot of games and have limited storage space. The box footprint is important to me when getting new games. Joyride thankfully has a very slim box, only taking up as much space as is necessary for the components. This is a big plus for me.

Gameplay

Joyride straddles two different genres of racing board game. On one hand, you have more serious skill based racing games, such as Formula D or Rallyman. On the other hand, you have chaotic combat racing games such as the new Thunder Road. Joyride is in the middle.

You can have a good amount of control over your vehicle, choosing when to lock dice and when to roll them. You can strategically use limited abilities and gauge risks on how to drive. However, there can be a lot of vehicle contact in this game that can completely mess up any plans you have. It is very easy to get turned around which can cost you multiple turns trying to get going again.

While the game is fun to play, it is hard to take it too seriously when you can so easily be taken out of the race from another player colliding with you. This feels at odds with the system of locking and rolling dice, changing gears, and using driving abilities. New players very often have trouble grasping the details of how to drive. Why have such details and a somewhat complicated driving system when one bad and possibly uncontrollable turn can ruin everything?

Compare this game to Thunder Road, which is a quite simple single D6 roll to move your car. That game is full of chaos, but the mechanics are so quick and easy that it doesn’t really matter. While there is no player elimination in Joyride, you can effectively be removed from the competition very easily. In at least half of the games I’ve played, there is a runaway leader. They get really good rolls and nobody is able to interfere with them, leaving everyone else in the dust. There are items that you can pick up to drop on the track or shoot at each other, but they require someone to be hit by them and they usually don’t have a huge impact.

Player counts

The game scales from two to four players fairly well, but you need to make sure you use an appropriate track layout. The variety of track layouts that are possible is great. There is a book with over a dozen layouts that you can use, or you can make your own! If you’re playing at a smaller player count, you’ll want a tighter track to force more interaction. If there’s no interaction, then the game will be much less enjoyable.

From my experience with Joyride, the more players, the better. Two players is alright, but you’re not going to have a lot of the chaotic fun that happens with four cars trying to smash through a turn together or going in different directions. For a purely racing game I think there are better options out there. The aspect that sets this game apart is the shooting and smashing, so you want as much of that as possible.

Expansions

I have one expansion for the game, “High Seas”, which includes a new vehicle, some new weapons, and some new track tiles to use for custom layouts. The components come in a tiny little box, a fact that I love. There’s no reason for small expansions like this to have a big footprint. I can just move the components to the main box and get rid of the expansion box.

The new car is of the same art and component quality as the core game. It’s great to get a little more variety through an expansion like this. I will say, though, that while the different cars have special abilities, they don’t feel that different. Most abilities can only be used a single time or perhaps a second time if you are losing a race, and most of them are just one shot little tricks. The exception is the cars with passive or reusable abilities, like the truck with more momentum or the hotrod that can always shift up extra in exchange for some damage. Those ones feel like they have more personality.

Conclusion

Joyride: Survival of the Fastest is a fun game. The art and components are top notch and the individual game mechanics are great. However, due to the fact that the feel of the game is somewhere between serious racing and chaotic fun, I have a hard time recommending it over some of the alternatives. If you love to have a wide variety of games in your collection, this one could easily join the others and won’t take up much space in the process.

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