10 Days in the USA is a tile drawing game for 2-4 players by Alan Moon and Aaron Weissblum, produced by Out of the Box. I dismissed the game for quite a while since I hadn't yet discovered BGG and the box looked like it was a shelter for dull.

BOX
The box is a sturdy square box. It's shape is inoffensive easily stored. The box design is functional, but certainly not inspiring. It doesn't yell out, "Give me a look! I could be fun," but it is functional and does an excellent job of holding all the components.

COMPONENTS
The game comes with a nice colorful board, which is very functional. The states are one of 5 different colors, which makes finding them a bit easier. You know, for the kids.

Also included are 8 nice wooden card racks, 2 for each player. They are nicely divided into 10 sections, one for each day of your trip, starting with day 1 on the left

Finally, there are the tiles. There are 66 tiles in the game, one for each of the 50 states in the USA as well as 16 transportation tiles. More on these later. The tiles are thick cardboard and seem rather durable. The state tiles include not only a picture of the state, but also list the capital and the population of the state. The transportation tiles feature either a drawing of a car or a drawing of an airplane in 1 of the 5 colors.

ART
It seems everything in this game is designed for functionality. The board isn’t flashy, but it’s not distracting, either. The tiles are simply white tiles with a drawing of a state on each tile (or a car or plane for the transportation tiles).

RULES
The 4 pages of rules are clear and concise. There are only a few examples, and the examples clarify what little confusion there may be about the rules.

GAMEPLAY
The goal of the game is to be the first player to have a completed trip – but was is a completed trip? A trip is complete when your rack has 10 tiles that are connected legally to one another. Connections are made as follows: you can walk to an adjacent state, so you may have 2 states that border one another adjacent in your rack; you can drive to another state, which allows you to drive through a state that borders your origin and your destination utilizing a car tile between the two states; or you may fly from one state to a like colored state using the matching color airplane tile between the two states.

The game is played in two stages. The first stage is essentially a set-up stage. All players simultaneously draw tiles from a face down pile and add them to their racks. Once a tile is added to the rack, it can’t be moved. This can be frustrating as you may well have a solid group set up that runs into a tile that was almost in the right position. Once all players have drawn and placed their initial 10 tiles, the remaining face down tiles are arranged into a pile, and the top 3 are flipped face up, and the game begins.

On your turn, you may either draw a blind tile from the face down stack or take one of the 3 face-up tiles. The selected tile may either be discarded, face-up, onto one of the three discard piles, or it may be placed in your rack. If placed in your rack, the tile it is replacing is discarded onto one of the 3 face up discard piles. If you take a face up tile and it completely depletes that discard pile, your discarded tile must go to replace that tile – in other words, there will always be 3 face up tiles from which to choose.

From this point, it’s lather, rinse, repeat. This goes on until someone wins and lays down their tiles, demonstrating their route is legal.

FUNFACTOR
The game is not too shabby on the funfactor scale. It was certainly more fun than I anticipated. It can be exceptionally frustrating having what could be a complete route in an order that is just almost right, but there is a certain joy in completing a route that I can’t quite explain. It’s a popcorn game – light and airy and hard to resist. And a lot like popcorn, it doesn’t seem like it will fill you up, but if you’re not careful, it will.

PROS
quick and easy to teach
good, light fun
if you’re not careful, you might learn something
can be played with grandma

CONS
can be hard to convince people to play, theme-wise
can be agonizingly frustrating when you are *almost* there

FINAL WORDS
10 Days in the USA succeeds where many educational games fail, in that it’s fun. The learning just happens, and it’s particularly gratifying to see kids playing it several times and picking up the locations of states. Hell, it’s gratifying seeing ME pick up the locations of several of the states. It's also nice that it's a game that really crosses gaming lines allowing virtually anyone to play.

RATING