Review: Thunder Road

‘80s games were often marketed with commercials featuring over-excited kids losing their minds around the table. Boxes would feature similar scenarios, staged photographs promising The Good Times. Mad Max in-all-but-name, Thunder Road, was one of these kinds of games. It was brilliant – a novel “switch-and-link” mechanism using two road tiles captured the sense of an endless post-apocalyptic highway. The game’s relentless velocity and brutal car combat captured the tone for many would-be road warriors. But it was a simple game designed for mainstream audiences; accessible and immediate, without any “hobby games” folderol.

The risk when publishers try to modernize designs is overcorrecting assumed obsolescence. I always worry that the point of a game like Thunder Road, which is more Ramones than Rush, will be drowned by the expectations of the modern hobbyist market. Thankfully with Thunder Road: Vendetta, Restoration Games has proven once again to be the masters of making vintage game experiences which whilst not necessarily in line with modern expectations, still feel contemporary and current.

Thunder Road is a smashy, thrashy one-two-three-four game, but its hardly d-u-m-b. Everything that was smart about the original design survives, everything added by Restoration speaks to the spirit of its ancestor. It is crafted with admiration and respect; it doesn’t feel like a postmortem “fix”. Its rules excite the player with possibilities rather than restrictions. Play is paramount to sometimes anti-fun concepts such as “elegance”, “balance” or “sophistication”. Its merciless- player elimination is still a thing, but when you lose to mishaps, misjudgments, or maliciousness you’ll laugh and watch your friends or family bash it out to a bitter end, whether that means a last person standing finish or someone managing to defy the odds and cross the finish line at the end of the fifth track section.

Peel back the layer of chrome – and friends, it is thick – and you’ll find a lean mechanical chassis of assigning die rolls to activate your three cars. There are a couple of result-triggered special actions, such as repairing a vehicle or sending a Gyrocopter to take a potshot. Hilarious rules for ramming involving two special dice interact with the size of the vehicles, resulting in cascading consequences. A Wings of War-like damage deck offers additional narrative when the car behind shoots you up or decides to take the “rubbin’ is racin’” adage seriously.

The expansions offer tons of options that add detail like a Big Rig and a fleet of motorcycles. The two road tiles in the base game have been expanded to a stack of double-sided boards with printed terrain features ranging from ramps to toxic goo and sheets of glass and there are even more with the additional content, so you need never race the same stretch of nuked interstate twice. Special weapon cards and unique drivers add some great effects. How about a deck of German-engineered custom parts to soup up your post-apocalyptic fleet? The add-ons are all either very good or great, but none are essential.

My son and his friend played this game over the summer. After the first game, they both said “this is the best game I’ve ever played”. That’s a better “seal of approval” than one issued by a career board game content creator. It is my favorite title of 2023 and it’s not a close race. I’ve decided to ignore most of the chaff this industry churns out, but this is one I’ve been excited to play and play repeatedly. I feel like one of the kids on the backs of those boxes back in 1986 and as a jaded AF 47-year-old hobby game player, it feels like Valhalla.

Game Design: Dave Chalker, Brett Myers
Art: Marie Bergeron, Garrett Kaida
Published by Restoration Games

This feature originally appeared in Wyrd Science Vol.1, Issue 5 (Dec '23)