Heart of Kent Gaming

Overview:

I bought this game at the Chatham Dockyards gaming con in 2025 and instantly loved it because of its traveling theme. I also quite liked that it had the charm of Ticket to Ride without being identical to it. One of my favourite features is that each objective card had some interesting information about the destination you’re traveling to, which appealed to the geographer in me!

Game aim– simple explanation

The main aim of this game is to score points by completing as many of the destination objectives as you have in your hand. They are held secretly by you so your opponents do not know where you are trying to go and likewise you do not know where they are trying to get to. However, you get an additional point if it is a destination that you have disclosed to other players, as noted by your token on the board (in this case i was the Red Hot Air Balloon traveler!). Each player only gets 4 of these! The bigger token is to remind you who’s tokens belong to who!

To complete these objectives, on your turn you have to lay down arrows in the direction you are going. It is usually only 1 arrow per turn but if you land on a blue box on the path (white dotted lines) you get to instantly lay another arrow or if you choose to spend a ticket (you get 3 to commence with but can collect more by landing on the red stars) you can add another arrow or remove the arrow last played by your opponent, if you don’t like where it’s headed. If you reach your destination, you get to reveal your destination card that you have been concealing in your hand. However, anyone can further one of the 3 different colour routes (red, yellow, blue), so if they accidentally reach your destination on their turn, you can still claim this as your own. You just cannot retrospectively do so if you were to not realise that someone had landed on your destination. There is also a draw pile of additional cards, which you can claim if you land on them as your travelling to your objective destinations. They enable you to accrue more points.

What i like about this game:

• It’s easy to play and has great replayability.
• You can play between 2 and 6 players.
• Its young person friendly (recommended age 8+)
• The artwork is really nice, colours are rather bold and design consistent.
• You can enjoy a good 30-45 minutes.

What the challenges are of this game:

• Its rather big so traveling with it is not an option- you absolutely need table space.
• If you have physical disabilities, some of the tokens are small so for those lacking the dexterity in their fingers this would be challenging.
• For anyone with visual impairment the blue arrows on the blue ocean can blend together.
• We found ourselves often standing to place our arrows because of the height of table and reach we had from sitting so if you were in a wheelchair and found it hard to physically stand or move, you might find it hard to reach.

Rating

Overall, i really like this game and i do find it hard to be objective because it is all the things i like in a game- placement setting, objective delivery and simplistic point scoring system. However, there are few things i would do to really improve this game so i would give it a solid 4/5. I seldom turn down the opportunity to play it and could happily play a good 2 or 3 games of this as there are so many landmarks and destinations to reach so the game differs each time despite the quite simple but effective mechanics.

Want to play it sometime?

Pop in and see us on Friday evening as i’m always about for tabletop gaming and i often try to bring a variety of games! If this is one you like the look of and want to try, comment below! Alternatively, if you have your own views of this game, I would love to hear them 🙂