On each turn draw a line to complete a section of their line with their coloured pencil – making sure they are following the construction rules. Try not to draw too many lines that cut off other routes; you can’t cross anything you’ve already done.

Players must start from the station that represents their coloured pencil and draw a line to the revealed symbol. It’s somewhat avoidable if you plan things out, but experiencing it (being unable to connect to a new Station) kind of sucks. Your actions are simple: starting from your current pencil color station, and viewing the action’s current card shape (circle, square, triangle, or pentagon, aligning with the station shapes on each player’s sheet), players must draw a single line along the gray pre-printed lines from one shape to one matching the currently flipped card.Granted, you’re not really optimizing for tourist comfort, but you’ll get them there eventually, and that’s what urban transit is all about. When the 5th Station card is flipped, you each tot up your scores for the round and then the pencils are passed around from left to right (or any unused pencil from the right in a 2 player game).

The railroad switch card (a blue station card) allows you to branch off from anywhere along your current line. Each underground line scores you points based on; the route it takes, how many times it crosses under the Thames, and the tourist sites it stops at. The downside is that this one is truly simultaneous solitaire – there is no interaction at all between players other than handing them a new color of pencil. Note that you will always use all 4 pencils in each game, regardless of the player count, because each player will use each color once.Disclosure: Meeple Mountain received a free copy of this product in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

You get a real sense of pride watching your increasingly colourful creation growing on the notepad in front of you. Connecting to stations with spiky outlines (Tourist Sites) will let you cross off the leftmost symbol on the bottom of your player board. You will be balancing getting your route into as many of these districts as possible while getting as many stations in each district too. Lines are never allowed to cross, so you need to be flexible enough to reach any of the possible symbols. The objectives are pretty easy to achieve and we’ve not felt that they’ve added much to our sessions with everyone scoring the same for them.In the station cards, there’s one of each shape in blue and pink, one wild in each color, and then the blue track split card. Each color pencil is assigned a once-per-round power that can be used to score extra stations, use a wild Joker symbol in a pinch, or even adding a second section of track on a single turn. Next Station: London makes for a fun puzzle for an afternoon or two, but I am having a hard time imagining a world where I play it 20-30 times.

Yet, there’s something satisfying about the way that each player utilizes the same card draws for different lines and how a simple decision to draw a line in a certain direction can cause tension for the next draw. Getting in a position where you are reliant on a flip of the card to reveal something you so desperately need can be common. Optimisation and efficiency is key to creating a streamlined yet effective network which traverses London to visit the sights and uses the tunnels that pass under the River Thames. This, mixed with the limited number of cards, gives me the sense that after a half-dozen plays, Next Station: London might not be very interesting.It is quick to play, but with plenty to think about with the option to scale the difficulty to be inclusive to all.