Roman Taxi
Roman Taxi is a game of chariot-cabs and passengers racing through Ancient Rome. Players act as cabbies, picking up fares and tearing through narrow passageways to drop them off in time to earn a full fare. Dignitaries from all eras in history – including several fictional characters – await the two-wheeled, checkered chariots coming to swiftly take them to their destinations. Event cards spice up the travel by adding additional points and giving charioteers additional moves among other things. In the end, once the passengers are all delivered (or abandoned completely), the game ends and the cabbie with the most fare points wins.
Bringing new concepts to an old game design can easily end in unmitigated disaster. The result is often either a cruel parody of the original or merely a poor imitation. Roman Taxi manages to take an old favorite and add enough new elements to make the game fresh and interesting. While it is not a resoundingly successful game for older gamers, it does create a new experience for younger gamers and parents looking for new ways to challenge their children.
Roman Taxi gives an immediate positive impression with the fun graphical design and quality boards. Gameplay is fairly quick, with players moving from colored square to colored square around the main board. Traffic cards marked with the same colors as the board squares are dealt out into three rows of four, allowing players to choose which color to move to next. Spaces around the board are labeled with letters of the alphabet to indicate pick-up and drop-off points listed on each passenger’s card. Players race around the board from stop to stop, picking up and dropping off their famous fares as quickly as possible. At the end of each turn, a minute counter is placed on each passenger en route. Once the passenger has reached his Time limit, he is only worth half of his original fare. If the passenger reaches twice his time limit, he simply leaves the cab for being too slow and is removed from the game with no score.
One cannot help but compare Roman Taxi to the early childhood favorite Candy Land. Colored cards and spaces tell players where to move around the board in a circuitous route in Roman Taxi, much like its sweeter predecessor. These comparisons, while fair, are not completely accurate. The complications thrown into Roman Taxi improve upon the Candy Land experience greatly and create a more sophisticated game that is palatable to the modern gamer with children. Please note the caveat there: “with children.” This is certainly not a game to pull out at the next gathering of twenty-something gamers. Rather than call it a “beer and pretzels” game, let’s stick with a “milk and cookies” game.
The game is made a bit more complex through various methods. Streets in this colorful version of Rome are mostly two-way (drive on the right, please), but certain thoroughfares are one-way, causing traffic problems and requiring planning ahead to make the quickest routes possible. Besides using simply colored cards, other Traffic cards allow double movements and U-Turns. U-Turns are also allowed anytime a chariot enters an intersection. This movement change allows for some quick route changes to get your fare to his destination.
The humor needed for this game is definitely present. Not only is the cartoony-style art fun, it allows for the presentation of even Emperor Nero as a cute and cuddly fiddle player. Fictional characters are included in the game as well, including Comicus from Mel Brooks’ History of the World Part I. Adding this bit of comic relief gives the game an even greater “milk and cookies” feel.
All in all, Roman Taxi is an enjoyable game. It takes a familiar concept and adds enough new elements to create a new play experience that will challenge young players, but keep the attention of their parents as well. Bucephalus Games has found a good compromise between an old favorite and new mechanics to create a fun time and a game that satisfies.