So, I got "On the Undergound" on a whim. Small box, supposedly thinky game, and suddenly someone here in Brazil offers his copy for sale. I decided to trade my copy of Ys and Razzia for this and "Colossal Arena", and I really don't regret doing it so. Even though this isn't one of my favorite games, it does have its place in my (sadly limited) collection.

Had I read the manual before deciding I probably wouldn't have bought the game. I'm just unable to read the rules of a game unless I've purchased it (yes, this can lead to some mistakes). I usually don't have an opinion on the game from just reading the rules, but in this case the game seemed terribly boring and uneventful.

The rules were very simple, but the game can be quite thinky. The movement of the passenger is very tricky and can be wildly manipulated by the placement of the four tracks you have in a turn. You have many, many different options in this game, which makes me mention the first negative aspect of this game: never play with an AP player. Ever. Out of the 150 games I've played to date this is probably the one most prone to AP out of them all.

You have a lot you can do in your turn, and most of your actions don't score a lot, so you're pretty much managing options that differ in one or two VP between them. If you're not patient to sort out from all those the one that is the best, this game is not for you.

This is quite the thinky game, and thus the player whose turn it is will probably keep quiet until he makes his decisions. My brother even said "this game is good, but it isn't much fun"; he meant that this is not a game that will produce memorable plays or matches that are terribly interesting. Some of the passenger manipulations during the game will seem a bit crazy, but you'll be too busy thinking about what you will do after that to even laugh. Out of all the games I own this is probably the most "serious" one, and by that I mean that matches of this usually are very silent and joke-free (something rare in my game group).

One thing that bears mentioning is that I think one should only play this game with 2 or 3 players. With 4 or 5, the downtime would be monstrous, since every turn a player is bouncing between many different options and trying to imagine from which ones of the high-scoring options leave him a better situation in the long-term. So if there are many players between your turns, bring a Gameboy or an interesting book, because the wait will be long.

I mentioned long-term because, unlike many other euros, this one asks for quite a bit of long-term thinking. One cannot start all his lines in the same place of the map, one should always try to cover as much ground as possible (while making his lines intersect), and so on. Since out of all the destinations only 3 or 4 won't be visited, you have to think not only of where he's going right now, but also were he hasn't gone YET.

Matches of this game are usually very tight. Since one usually scores every turn, and always little by little (if you get 4 points in a turn, it's a lot), the game can be cruel if you fall behind. However, most of the matches end up with very few points between the winner and the loser. There's no big end-game bonus, so sometimes you'll have a completely superfluous last turn.

So, all in all, I rate this game an 8, which could drop to 7.5 or maybe even 7 after 10 or 20 more plays. The mechanics are quite tight, the game "works" perfectly, but the silence of a match of this can be somewhat off-putting, I think. It takes quite the eurogamer to endure such a "serious" game. The tactics and the strategy of it can be quite subtle and engaging, but the dryness of it can make even some abstracts seem flashy. I've read it somewhere that the game is based on a mathematical problem, and I can definitely believe in that.

(Funny how negative this review sounds for an 8/10 rating, but I think this game takes a very special kind of gamer to enjoy, and even though I'm one of them, I definitely think that one should be "careful" before suggesting this game in a game group)