Wouter & Ymke 
There’s something fun about games that immediately make you think about travelling. Not in the big “quit your job and backpack across Europe” kind of way, but more like scrolling through photos of places you’d like to visit someday while sitting on your couch with snacks nearby. That’s kind of the feeling Card Trip gave us.
In Card Trip, you build your own little journey across Europe using cities, festivals, attractions, and national parks. Over time your route grows into a full 16-card road trip with campsites dividing the different weeks of your journey. Sounds very relaxed, right? And visually, it is. But after a few turns the game starts pushing back a bit more than we expected.
You constantly have to deal with rising card numbers, energy limits, location types, and drafting choices that don’t always go your way. So while the game looks cozy and welcoming, there’s more going on underneath than I first expected. At one point I had what looked like the perfect route planned out, only to realise I’d completely trapped myself because of one badly timed event card. So yes, apparently even cardboard holidays can become stressful. Very realistic, I guess.
What I liked quite a lot is that the game never becomes difficult to understand. The rules stay fairly straightforward the whole time. You draft cards, build your route, rest at campsites when needed, and try to score efficiently. But within that simple structure, we kept running into turns where one card solved a problem while creating another one somewhere else. For us, it worked best as one of those games where you can still talk around the table while trying to fix your own mess of a travel schedule.
👥 2-6 players, ages 8+
⌛ Playing time: 20 minutes
📝 Designer: Yannick Zoldermans
🎨 Artwork: Elise van Houten
🏢 Publisher: Jolly Dutch (review copy provided)
Gameplay overview
Every player builds their own travel route at the same time. During each round, everybody secretly chooses two cards from their hand, places them face down, and then reveals them before adding them to their route. After that, the remaining cards get passed to the left. So yes, sometimes you watch the exact card you wanted disappear into somebody else’s hands. A true budget airline experience.
Your route is divided into weeks. A week contains connected location cards and ends when you place a campsite. Within the same week, every new location card has to be higher in number than the previous one. You also can’t place the same location type directly next to each other, and every week has a maximum energy limit of 7.
That combination is really where most of the game happens. One card might fit perfectly by number but ruin your energy balance. Another might score well but repeat a location type you just used. A high-energy event might give decent points, but suddenly make the rest of your week much harder to finish. And sometimes you simply take a campsite earlier than planned because your route is starting to look like complete chaos.
The campsite system ended up being one of the parts we enjoyed most. Since every card can become a campsite, bad cards never feel completely dead. At the same time, using a campsite too early can still cost you. It may help your attractions later, but it also cuts off the current week before you’ve had the chance to add more useful location types or squeeze in another good scoring card. You also can’t place two campsites next to each other, so even your “escape option” still needs a little planning. I liked that balance quite a bit because it stops campsites from feeling like an easy reset button.
Scoring comes from several directions at once. Event cards score points equal to their energy cost. National parks reward collecting sets, although that scoring caps out after five parks. Cities want attractions next to them, while attractions themselves score based on the number of campsites in your route. Then there are also bonus cards that reward or punish players depending on certain location types. What I liked is that our routes rarely looked the same by the end. One player chased parks, somebody else built around attractions, while I mostly tried to repair my terrible planning.
I’ll be honest though, the scoring can feel a little difficult to read while playing. It’s not always obvious who’s ahead until the very end, especially because everybody is building toward slightly different things. For us it mostly created a few funny moments where somebody quietly counted their points at the end and suddenly won by far more than expected.
Artwork, components, and visual design
This is definitely the part that immediately caught my attention. Card Trip looks good on the table without trying too hard. The artwork has this soft watercolor style that fits the travelling theme nicely, and the different categories all have their own colours, which makes the cards easy to read during play.
The game includes cities, national parks, attractions, and event cards, all based on real European locations. You’ll recognise places like Prague, Meteora, and the Eiffel Tower. Some cards feel more lively and busy, especially the festivals and events, while the national parks have a calmer atmosphere. It gives the whole deck a nice variety without making the visual style feel inconsistent.
I also liked that the cards stay readable despite having quite a bit of information on them. The number, energy cost, and location type are all easy to spot. That sounds like a small thing, but some card games make you squint at symbols for half the game, and thankfully this one doesn’t. The layout stays clean enough that even new players understand the cards fairly quickly.
The campsite side of the cards adds a nice touch too. Instead of landmarks and cities, you get nighttime camping scenes with tents and northern lights. Mechanically they separate the weeks in your route, but visually they also help sell the idea that your journey has pauses and rest stops in between.
The box itself keeps the travel theme going with a suitcase-style design and travel stickers all over it. It’s compact, colourful, and easy to get to the table. Nothing over the top, but it fits the game well. Overall, I think the presentation really helps the game leave a stronger impression than the mechanisms alone probably would have.
Our experience
The first thing we noticed is that the game becomes more restrictive much faster than expected. Early turns feel open and flexible, and for a little while it almost feels like you can place anything anywhere. Then suddenly you realise your numbers no longer fit properly, your energy is almost gone, and half the cards in your hand have become difficult to place. That worked really well for us because the game gradually became harder on its own without suddenly introducing extra complications. By the end, even small decisions can matter quite a bit because one misplaced card affects several scoring opportunities at once.
The drafting itself also worked better for us than expected. It never becomes aggressive or mean, but you do regularly notice yourself checking what another player may want before deciding what to keep. There’s a nice balance between improving your own route and making sure you don’t hand somebody else exactly what they need. I know some players prefer drafting games with stronger interaction, but for us this lighter approach fit the travelling theme pretty naturally. Everybody stays involved without the game becoming exhausting.
One thing we really liked was how personal every finished route looked by the end. Even though everybody follows the same placement rules, the final tableaus usually ended up feeling very different from one another. Some players chased national parks, others focused more on attractions or efficient weeks, while somebody else just tried to survive the last few rounds with whatever cards still worked. And then there was me, accidentally creating what looked less like a holiday and more like a logistical disaster across three countries.
We also had a few moments where the scoring surprised us at the end. Someone who looked behind during the game suddenly jumped ahead because their attractions and campsites worked together much better than expected. I can imagine some groups preferring a game where the winner is easier to predict during play, but for us it mostly led to funny reactions once the points were counted up. It made the final scoring more fun because nobody at the table seemed completely sure who had won yet.
Our thoughts
Most of the ideas here are familiar already. You draft cards, build combinations, manage restrictions, and try to score efficiently. None of the mechanisms felt particularly new to me, but I also rarely had moments where the gameplay and theme felt disconnected from each other. Managing energy actually feels connected to the idea of planning a road trip, campsites break up your journey in a way that makes thematic sense, and building separate weeks gives your route structure instead of feeling like random card placement.
For me, the biggest strength is accessibility combined with just enough friction to keep decisions interesting. We barely needed any rules reminders after the first few rounds, but people still kept staring at their hands trying to figure out how to make one more card fit. The game stays approachable without becoming completely mindless, which fits this type of travel-themed card game very well.
At the same time, I do think the game leans more tactical than strategic. You can plan ahead to a certain degree, but the constantly shifting draft means you often end up reacting to what arrives in your hand rather than following a long-term master plan. I enjoyed that because it keeps the game moving and stops turns from dragging too much, but players who prefer deep engine-building or very controlled strategy games may find it lighter than they hoped.
I do wonder whether certain scoring approaches will eventually become stronger than others after lots of plays. Right now attraction-heavy routes, national park collection, or highly varied weeks all seem viable, which is good. But if one approach eventually proves noticeably stronger than the others, I could see the game becoming a little more predictable over time. The bonus cards help with that as well. They didn’t suddenly make the game feel completely different, but they were enough to make us pay attention to different things from game to game.
The gameplay itself stays fairly simple, so a lot of the game’s personality really comes from the presentation. The artwork, European landmarks, campsite imagery, and growing travel routes all help create a game that people immediately understand just by looking at the table.
I’d mainly recommend it to families, casual groups, travel-theme fans, and players who enjoy lighter tableau-building or drafting games. If you’re looking for extremely deep long-term strategy, this probably won’t fully satisfy you. But if you want a charming card game with a strong theme, smooth pacing, and enough small decisions to stay engaging from start to finish, I think Card Trip does a really good job at being exactly that.
📝 We received a copy of the game from Jolly Dutch.
Jolly Dutch also gave me a personal affiliate code: TABLETOPPING.
With this code, you get 10% off a yearly Jolly Club subscription during the first year. In the Netherlands, that means the subscription goes from €60 to €54. The Jolly Club is currently available only in the Netherlands and Belgium, and the Belgian version is slightly more expensive because of shipping.
If you decide to use the code, I receive a small commission. No pressure at all, of course. Just sharing it in case you were already considering it.
More info: Jolly Club
