Trilhas Urbanas: 2024 Analog Game & People’s Choice Winner

Walking is a good way to get to know a city, to learn about its people and its stories, its problems and its strengths. In Trilhas Urbanas, a whimsical boardgame by Pistache Editorial, players recount stories of what they see while walking to school and debate ways that their world could be better. It is an elegant setup that allows the game to do something truly remarkable: encourage players to imagine events in their immediate surroundings, and then take them to larger and larger scales. Trilhas Urbanas lets other players respond to the story by proposing new urban policies and argue for how those policies might affect and better the lives of individual people. At the same time, the whole city is shrouded by major structural issues that make life difficult, and players must also measure their choices for how they interact at that structural level. Where another game might engage the player in these questions by centering the political machinations and economic constraints that limit civic change, Trilhas Urbanas puts centers the perspective of citizens and a hopeful belief that positive change is realistic.

Moreover, it accomplishes these design goals with an elegant palette of game mechanics. Each player takes a turn crafting a problem from a handful of story dice, taking cues from the lushly illustrated game board, and other players pick a card from their hand as a solution. There are just enough limitations to ground the players, while giving them a lot of freedom to explore. Each element of the game shows careful consideration for its flexibility and meaning to the game play. For example, mechanically the game-board could have been a simple scoring track to measure player progress. Instead, the designers have made it a modular series of winding pieces that can be stretched or shrunk. It gives players control over their game time, allows them to choose topics to explore (at the beach, in the city center), and gives everyone a sense of agency over the city itself. The game is full of such small details that sync up to make something special.

The judges were all impressed by the way the game integrates many of the principles that guide the GEE! Awards. We take on roles while playing—and though these roles may not differ much for a child, the insights of the in-game avatar are awarded the respect and attention of an expert. The players are given enormous creative control over their expression of self, and over the world of the city. At the same time, that creativity drives the player to think about the consequences of their actions with increasing levels of depth. The blend of cooperation and competition in the game turns other players into a just-in-time resource for learning about their own city. Perhaps some of the players have never taken a bus, or never visited the beach, and don’t understand the nature of a problem—other players readily step in to describe what it’s like to wait for 50 minutes outdoors or to pick a path along broken glass. In many ways, digital games have an easier time implementing some of Gee’s principles. An avatar is often a natural stand-in for the player, and that avatar can be customized and given a clear game role. However, Trilhas Urbanas is an illuminating example of how these same things can be integrated deeply and meaningfully in a board game.

               The Analog Games category saw a number of really strong games this year. Trilhas Urbanas stood out among them for the difficulty of the problem it tackles, for the beauty of its art, for the sheer fun we had playing, and for demonstrating the efficacy of James Paul Gee’s principles of good design.

Thanks to Analog Game category lead, Peter McDonald, and judges: Max Shafer-Landau, Felipe Martinez Gomez, Caleb Probst.