In my house, trivia-based party games are king. In fact, they’re one of the very select few types of games that even the wives enjoy, so any opportunity to introduce a new one into the mix is always welcome.

That Tracks, however, was one of those games I approached with a bit of caution because I wasn’t entirely convinced the concept was actually going to work. Mostly because, despite appearances, That Tracks isn’t really a trivia game.

The basic gimmick here is that players are asked to remember the popularity of various trends and then make educated guesses about where they belong on line and pie graphs.

Yeah… graphs.

It’s a strange concept for a party game and, frankly, a difficult one to even imagine being fun. Nothing gets a gaming group fired up quite like someone slapping a pie chart down on the table and saying, “Alright everyone, party time!”

Still, test it we did.

So today we’re going to talk about That Tracks, a party game that asks just how much you really know about the trends, fads, and cultural nonsense that have surrounded us over the years.

Overview

Final Score: (2 out of 5) Poor

That Tracks has a very simple premise. Players are split into two teams and presented with either a dot or pie graph alongside four popular trends, fads, musicians or whatever else the game decides to throw at you.

The goal is to correctly figure out which part of the graph belongs to which trend. You do this over six rounds, scoring points for the answers you get right, and naturally, the team with the most points at the end wins.

There is, however, some procedural stuff designed to make this a little more involved and introduce a bit of mind gaming into the proceedings.

Each team gets two turns every round to make their guesses. Your team picks two trends, then the opposing team does the same, after which you go back and forth picking the remaining ones.

The interesting part of this is that while the other team is making their decisions, they’re inevitably debating their reasoning out loud. You’re sitting there listening to them argue about whether something was popular in 2005 or 2015, whether everyone actually watched some TV show or whether it just seemed that way, and whether some ridiculous fad was genuinely a thing or just something that happened in their particular corner of the world.

All of that is information you can use when it’s your turn.

Each team also gets a bonus tile that can be placed on a guess they feel particularly confident about. Get that one right and you double the points for that trend.

I wouldn’t exactly call any of this strategy, but these two mechanics prevent the game from simply being one team doing its thing, followed by the other team doing its thing, and then everyone checking the scores to see who did better. There is some actual back and forth here, and it’s partially within those little gears that the party game atmosphere starts to emerge.

People argue about these trends. They try to convince their teammates that their memory is correct. They listen to the other team and suddenly start second-guessing themselves.

It’s particularly entertaining when you have different generations at the table because their perspectives can be wildly different. Something one person remembers as an absolutely massive cultural phenomenon might get a blank stare from someone ten years younger, while another player is utterly convinced something was huge simply because everyone at their school was doing it.

That’s really where That Tracks starts to reveal what kind of party game it actually is.

The question is, does all of that make it a fun one?

Well, let’s get into it.

Components

Score: 
Tilt: 

Pros: The game is very inexpensive.

Cons: While some of the components are fine, the problem areas are painful and disruptive.

Unfortunately, we’re going to have to start out negative here because, to be frank, the components and component design in That Tracks leave a lot to be desired.

First, there is this contraption that holds the graph cards on the table, along with sliders designed to hide the answers until they’re revealed.

It’s terrible.

The stand itself quite literally fell apart the first time we handled it. It constantly tipped over, the sliders were awkward to use and the whole thing just feels incredibly cheap.

This actually impacted the game quite a bit because we were constantly accidentally revealing the answers printed at the bottom of the cards. You’re trying to carefully manipulate this flimsy little stand without exposing anything and the whole thing is threatening to collapse in your hands at the slightest touch.

And somehow, that wasn’t even the worst part.

This is a party game, so presumably you’re going to have five or six people sitting around the table. We had three people on each team, but the cards are printed extremely small. You need to be fairly close to actually read them and, because the stand faces in one direction, half the table can’t see it without moving it.

Naturally, you want to move it around so everyone can see. Except you can’t because if you so much as breathe on the damn thing, it falls apart.

It became a real nuisance.

It’s just cheaply made and poorly designed, which is particularly frustrating because the entire game revolves around everyone being able to clearly see and interact with these cards.

Now, the game does come with whiteboard pens, boards and tokens you can write on, which is nice. Those work perfectly well and make everything easy to manipulate and reuse, but as a whole, the component experience was terrible.

Then we get to the rulebook.

The instructions are awful, which is kind of crazy because you can explain how to play That Tracks in about thirty seconds. Somehow, however, it took us nearly twenty minutes to grasp the language utilized in this rulebook; it was frustrating.

They took what is an incredibly simple game and seemingly found the most complicated possible way to explain it. Eventually we gave up, went on YouTube and found a tutorial video.

Thirty seconds later, we understood the game.

Afterwards, going back and reading the rules, they made sense, but the language and structure used to explain everything was unnecessarily confusing. When your game can be verbally explained in less time than it takes to make a cup of coffee, there is really no excuse for a rulebook making it feel complicated.

I don’t normally completely flunk a game on components, but That Tracks comes about as close to an F as you can get without actually getting one.

They really need to rethink the components and component design here because I genuinely don’t understand how this setup made it through playtesting in its current form. For us, the problems were obvious the moment we opened the box.

These components actively got in the way of playing the game and sabotaged the experience.

Theme

Score: 
Tilt: 

Pros: Pop culture fads are familiar, fun, and often surprising; it’s fun to muse about them during the game.

Cons: When answers are revealed, there is a lack of impact, it’s kind of a meh.. experience.

The theme in That Tracks is actually kind of clever and fun, far more than I imagined it would be when you consider that the main gameplay loop involves analyzing pie graphs!

There is something strangely satisfying about knowing these fads and trends. You get that same little burst of satisfaction you get from a trivia game when you know the answer and everyone else at the table is looking at you like, “How the hell did you know that?”

More importantly, though, there is a surprising amount of deduction involved.

If you’re reasonably confident about two of the four trends, the other two suddenly become a matter of educated guesses and process of elimination. You start talking it through with your team, everyone adds their two cents, someone remembers some obscure detail and gradually you piece together what you think the answer must be.

It becomes this kind of collective problem-solving exercise, and that part of That Tracks actually works quite well.

My issue is that none of this really adds much “party” to the concept.

I mean, it’s a game. You’re playing it together, you’re talking, arguing and having fun, but it doesn’t really generate those funny moments and quotable outcomes that I typically associate with a great party game.

The whole thing is just a little dry.

You’re essentially solving a communal problem together rather than being given a setup designed to create comedy, chaos or memorable moments. There can certainly be some entertaining conversations, particularly when people have wildly different memories of how popular something was, but the game itself isn’t really creating those moments.

I think the theme works. In fact, I think it works considerably better than “the pie graph game” has any right to.

Calling That Tracks a party game, however, feels like a bit of a stretch. It’s a light team-based deduction game that happens to work with a larger group.

I thought it was fun enough, but it certainly didn’t blow the doors off. The theme and concept fell into the “meh” category, not disappointing; I have a fun time playing it, but I’m itching to bring it to my next dinner party.

Gameplay

Score: 
Tilt: 

Pros: There is some entertainment and satisfaction to be found in trying to maximize your points based on guesses you feel certain about.

Cons: The reveal at the end of a round falls on deaf ears, even when something interesting happens, it’s mostly interesting in a sort of academic, abstract way, not a fun party way.

In terms of gameplay, That Tracks has that straight-to-it quality that makes party games the delight they can and often are. You explain the rules in a minute or so, everyone immediately gets it, and you’re off and running.

In that regard, That Tracks handles itself quite well.

While the theme is interesting and I think will work with most people, it doesn’t necessarily surprise or delight. The actual gameplay loop falls somewhere between “just fine” and “a bit static and uninteresting”.

Party games should absolutely be simple, but there really isn’t much between the pages here, so to speak.

The only semi-interesting wrinkle is that each round is split into two parts. You pick two topics, the opposing team does the same, and then you go back around for the remaining choices. This gives both teams an opportunity to undermine or challenge each other’s decisions, while introducing a little strategy regarding which topics you want to grab early and which ones you’re willing to leave until later. You also get to listen in on the opposing team, which can give you some added insight you might not otherwise have had.

The booster token adds a little tactical oomph as well. All it is is a frame you place on one of your choices, which doubles your score if you get it right. It gives you an opportunity to manipulate the score when you’re particularly confident about an answer.

Unfortunately, none of that really saves That Tracks from what is ultimately a pretty lackluster gameplay loop.

When you get right down to it, you’re looking at charts and guesstimating which trend belongs to which pie or line on it, often in a way that feels fairly arbitrary. Sometimes the answer is obvious, but quite often, even when there is an unexpected surprise when the answer is revealed, there still isn’t much of a party payoff.

It sort of feels like discovering that the pie of 38 is 119.38.

I don’t know what that means either, but that’s kind of the point.

The reveal isn’t some endorphin-infused event where everyone screams, laughs or throws their hands in the air. It’s more like, “Oh… Taylor Swift was less popular than Pink in 2015. Weird. Interesting… I guess.”

Then everyone kind of stares at the card for a second or two and moves on.

You don’t really know what to do with that information; it’s not funny, even if sometimes it’s surprising, and I’m not entirely convinced anyone cares. The only thing giving the reveal any weight is whether you guessed correctly and scored some points.

That’s the fundamental problem I had with the gameplay.

There is no real entertainment payoff, it’s a party game that isn’t much of a party and it doesn’t really hit any sweet spots in any other reckognizable genre.

A great party game takes a ridiculously simple mechanic and somehow turns it into a machine for creating moments, laughter, banter, that sort of thing. That Tracks has the simple mechanic, but it never really finds the second half of that equation. You guess, you reveal, you score, and you move on to the next graph.

Whatever else That Tracks might be as a game, I just don’t think statistics make for a particularly exciting reveal.

There’s no pizzazz, no real tension, and very little excitement. It’s all just a bit static and mundane. Worse is that if a team gets ahead on points, there is no real catch-up mechanic, so at the midpoint it can feel quite hopeless if someone gets ahead and you’re not going to care about it much.

It didn’t really do anything for me or anyone I introduced it to, as a game mechanic and as a method to entertain guests and family, it was pretty forgettable.

Replayability and Longevity

Score: 
Tilt: 

Pros: There is plenty of content in this box to entertain people who like this game.

Cons: Sadly, the first playthrough won’t motivate you to play again.

There are a lot of cards in the deck, and you’re really only using six over the course of a game, so from a purely content perspective, there is quite a bit of replayability in the box in principle.

You might assume there is a natural limit here because eventually you’re going to see every card, but that actually amounts to quite a few games. Even if you eventually swing back around and start seeing cards for a second time, chances are pretty good you will have forgotten most of the information anyway because it wasn’t that interesting the first time around.

It’s a bit like playing Trivial Pursuit. Even when a question comes up that you know you’ve seen before, there are so many cards and so much random information floating around that actually remembering the answer is another matter entirely.

So I don’t think running out of content is really the issue.

The bigger question when it comes to longevity and replayability is whether That Tracks is fun enough as both a novelty and as something you actually want to keep playing because you enjoyed it so much the first time.

Sadly, I think the answer is probably no. In fact, I never managed a single time when I brought the game out with my various social circles to get a second game going. Once was enough, and I doubt anyone will ever ask to play it again in the future.

In a sense the replayability score is kind of the domino effect of the rest of the review, if you didn’t really hit any marks anywhere else worth speaking of, by the time you get here, the conversation kind of repeats itself. You certainly can play this game many times, I’m just not sure who would want to.

There weren’t any hidden layers that revealed themselves once we understood the game better, nor did familiarity with the mechanics make things more interesting.

It was kind of meh the first time and remained kind of meh afterwards.

I will say that if That Tracks clicks with your group and you enjoy what it’s doing, there are plenty of plays in this box. You’re certainly not going to burn through the content quickly.

For us, though, the limiting factor wasn’t the number of cards. It was the desire to keep playing.

Conclusion

I think it’s fair to say that my experience with That Tracks was pretty lackluster. It’s always sad to give any game a negative review, but if you know gamersdungeon, we are generally a pretty positive voice. You really have to miss the target by a wide margin to end up with a score in the 1-2 star zones, Unfortunatetly That Tracks just doesn’t have the juice to punch through even my relatively generous barrier.

It started off on a negative note with component issues, both in terms of quality and design, and followed that up with a game that was, at absolute best, a mediocre experience and not much of a party.

The strange thing is that I don’t think there is anything fundamentally wrong with the rules or even the premise here. Some games just don’t work, and That Tracks doubles down and also fails to entertain.

I absolutely think there are people who will enjoy That Tracks. In fact, I suspect there are plenty of groups for whom the relaxed, collaborative deduction and nostalgia surrounding the various trends will be exactly what they’re looking for.

For me, though, it’s a pretty hard pass.

Unless you have a particular fascination with statistics, trends and fads, I just don’t see a compelling reason to choose That Tracks over the mountain of genuinely great party games already competing for space on the table.