Metro Runner is the latest game from Thunderworks Games. I first came to Thunderworks when they did their first game called Roll Player, a dice drafting game about making a “D&D” character. After mentioning it here, I realize I need to do a review of that. It shall be my next game review.

In Metro Runner you are playing a hacker in a Cyberpunk style futuristic world. Each player has a character with a unique ability to alter the Panop tiles in the center of the board. Ultimately the game is about advancing on two tracks: Influence and Notoriety. These yield points and will be the endgame trigger. How do you advance on those tracks? By taking jobs (cards), acquiring resources (cubes), and completing those jobs. When you complete a job you slide the card under your player board, which will potentially add to scoring and advance you on the tracks. And while all that is important to the advancement of the game, the unique aspect to it is the Panop tiles in the middle. There are cards near the Panop tiles that offer two different networks for you to hack. There are nine unique Panop tiles that can be shifted and manipulated (wait, that’s a lie, two of them are the same.) When you do this properly (in coordination with the network card) you gain rewards. One reward from hacking will always be advancing on the Notoriety track, the second will be some resource. There are two extra possible rewards that give more resources. These cards wind up being formulaic in the way the rewards are structured and often spending resources to try and achieve the bonus resources are simply not worth doing. Do you really want to pay a resource to gain an additional resource reward? Or spend two to gain two.

I’ve only been able to play this a couple of times so far. Once in a multiplayer game and once trying the solo variant. The solo is much harder. In the multiplayer version there will always be a racing element as anytime your opponent advances on a track you will be looking to answer that by advancing yourself. But in the solo variant, the Automa (I have a hard time calling it AI in the current environment as I am very anti Generative AI) flips a card every turn and you do everything it indicates. Which is always advancing one of the two tracks. And sometimes advancing a track twice! As a player though it is impossible to advance on every turn. Maybe if you were able to only hack the Panop you could keep pace with the Automa, but that wouldn’t be good for a final score as you would only be scoring the Notoriety track. I may try that just to see.

For me this game is a solid 8 stars. I’m glad to have it added to my collection.