Golden Spike

Golden Spike is a train-routes table game that starts at Promontory, Utah, where the first railroad was joined in 1869, and grows outward one region at a time. It begins on Utah and the Great Basin (thirty real towns from Salt Lake City and Moab to Reno and Boise, forty-eight routes that run only where roads and rail really go), and each map you finish opens the next: the Mountain West, the Pacific West, the Southwest, the Great Plains, the Midwest and Great Lakes, then the South. Each is its own game you can also play on its own.

Two to four players take turns drawing cards and laying their little trains along the routes, while each holds a few secret destination tickets, such as getting a train from Moab to Boise.

You can play against one to three computer rivals (easy or normal), pass the screen between friends in one room, or sit back and watch the computers play each other. The computer players see only what a person at the table would see: never your cards or your tickets. A cast of four narrators, each with a recorded voice, reacts to the big moments: a long stretch of railroad laid, a ticket finished, the lead changing hands, the last round, and the end. The map is a table you can turn and tilt in 3D, with a flat map one tap away, and a small train runs each route you claim before its cars settle into place (skipped if your device asks for reduced motion).