New season, and a new game! As usual, there was a game design episode of the podcast, so I'll include some bits from that in its own details section. Game design discussion (no spoilers) A good...
New season, and a new game! As usual, there was a game design episode of the podcast, so I'll include some bits from that in its own details section.
Game design discussion (no spoilers)
A good portion of what they talked about was summarised early in the first episode as they introduce the game from both the Snaker (I'm just going to call them the Snake for phone autocorrect reasons) and Blocker perspective, so a good amount of my notes aren't all that useful.
There are two major factors that went into the design of this game. The first is the location. Originally the team really wanted to do a season in Taiwan, but its rail network didn't lend itself to a fun game so they had to look elsewhere. South Korea's is pretty interconnected and small enough that you could make a game over the entire area. It also has a Y shape of high speed rail, which makes the map a little more dynamic to play on.
The second factor was looking at what the previous games had been, and seeing what variables can be changed.
Tag is a game where the runner is constantly moving, chasers know exactly where the runner is, the runner doesn't know where the chasers are, and the goal is trying to catch the runner.
Hide and Seek is a game where the hider is stationary, the seekers don't know where the hider is, the hider knows where the seekers are, and the goal is to narrow down where the hider is.
Jet Lag is a travel game, so we can rule out games where both teams are stationary. There's also trouble if everyone has knowledge of where everyone is, as the ambiguity helps in these games. So what if they play into that? Make a game where the solo person is on the move, but nobody knows where anyone is. It makes a game about trying to predict where the solo person is going to go, and place challenges ahead of them. High risk, high reward.
Also being able to describe your game as Snake makes it extremely easy to get the vast majority of the idea across to an audience. The problem is with figuring out the last 10% of the game. That's where things like the cards come in. We'll see more of them throughout the season, so I'm not going to re-explain them here. Perhaps the most interesting part is how the battle challenges are weighted towards the Blockers, as a way of stopping the Snake. That's important, because just chasing the Snake isn't a good idea as you'll never get ahead of them.
They also mentioned a few other rules to prevent un-fun strategies, like there's a 20 hour limit on an individual run to prevent stalling. Since Ben went first, if he'd just claimed one segment and then waited out the rest of the time then he'd have the longest snake and win. Since he is already at a station the blockers wouldn't be able to place new challenges and it'd be game over.
One of the major challenges was the map they're playing on, for multiple reasons. Google Maps (and Apple's) isn't as well filled out, and the apps for the rail companies are apparently pretty bad. Not only that, but there's a lot of ongoing construction, so new lines might exist, old lines might have moved, and all sorts of other things. There was also a lot of agonising over where "nodes" (stations where there are multiple ways out) end up, especially when local lines join up to the same tracks as express lines but the express doesn't visit all stations, and so on.
Episode 1 spoilers
As I was watching the episode I wondered how much footage ends up on the cutting room floor for this game? Apparently the answer is a lot. In fact so much for cut that it was the first thing mentioned on this week's podcast episode besides Sam's "we are so back".
Adam and Sam start by going to Osong as it's a hub for the high speed rail network and if Ben went that way and they didn't block it then he'd get a very large distance very quickly. It did leave the eastern route open, but the trains there are less frequent. Ben decided not to go east because he wouldn't have been able to reach the east coast in time to have a solid run down the country without being blocked.
The Birthday Boat challenge was actually one of the last ones to be added, and it got added because Ben's birthday started as they crossed the international date line when flying to Korea... And then ended a few hours later. It just so happened to be the first challenge they drew from the deck. It's a shame they couldn't complete it there, but it sounds like it was either the wrong time of year or that waterway isn't for public use.
I think it's unfortunate for Sam and Adam that their train north left at the same time as Ben's train was scheduled to arrive, but Ben's train was slightly delayed. They mention on the podcast that this ended up being pretty normal, so close moves like this are less frequent as the game goes on. It was pretty lucky that they could get back to Osong within about an hour. I understand why they decided to play the battle challenge when they got back, but it looks like a rushed decision in the edit.
I haven't talked about Ben much. That's because there isn't a lot really going on for him. He decides to wait around and take a slow train, then wait around and take another slow train. Some of his reasoning makes it into the sit, and there's a little more discussion in the podcast, but not much. For a first run of the game it's not bad, but I hope that future runs are a little more dynamic. Ultimately, I think Ben's hesitancy throughout this episode is a safe strategy but not a winning one. Sure it would have led to a higher chance of being blocked, but he basically guaranteed that by taking the local lines. Yes, it's unfortunate for him that the Blockers got another battle challenge and he shouldn't have been planning around that, but I feel like this wasn't the strongest he could have been.
The Tuho was a fun challenge to end on. I like that the advantage to the Blockers comes from them being able to practice for a while. Adam noticed during practice that the game gets much harder as more sticks are inside the bowl, so Ben's decision to go second probably didn't help him. I think the battle challenges are definitely going to be the highlights of this season, so I'm excited to see what other challenges there are.
Episode 3 spoilers After everything that could go wrong going wrong for the boys, it's nice to see something go right. On the podcast Sam talks about his choice of taking the coastal route instead...
Episode 3 spoilers
After everything that could go wrong going wrong for the boys, it's nice to see something go right.
On the podcast Sam talks about his choice of taking the coastal route instead of the Inland one. It was a lot more attractive to have one long segment where the chasers didn't have information, but he couldn't have really planned for the tracker card. I don't think it was the wrong decision, but it was the most obvious one.
There's a brief mention that Sam was a big advocate for the rule about the distance only counting when you reach the next node. Unfortunately for him, that cost him a bunch of progress at the end there. It's not the first time a rule has come back to bite the person/people that advocated for it, but that's part of the game. Often the rules lead to more interesting decision making. I'm pretty sure the inland route would have been completely irrelevant if Sam's progress was counted continuously, as it gives the lest information to the chasers and doesn't carry as much risk.
The final battle challenge was a late addition by Amy, and I think it's an interesting one. You can pick a number that's arbitrarily high, but there's a physical limit on the minimum number of items. On the podcast they predict that online discussion would say that the numbers they picked were too low, but I think they were too high. If the chasers had both gone for very low numbers (like 1) then there's very little room for Sam to get in the middle. From the podcast talk it didn't seem like they had anything planned for the case of a tie, which is odd considering how good the team is as finding edge cases when making the rules.
Episode 3 spoilers Yeah, I was surprised that the chasers didn't go for one or two objects. Lacking coordination, if the only goal is for the snaker to not get the middle number, both of the...
Episode 3 spoilers
Yeah, I was surprised that the chasers didn't go for one or two objects. Lacking coordination, if the only goal is for the snaker to not get the middle number, both of the chasers taking a number at the floor of the possibility range without the possibility of a number between them would be an easy way to lock out the snaker.
Episode 3 spoilers Can’t wait for the 5 minute episode 4 where Adam gets caught immediately /s Ben and Adam did a pretty good job this episode of salvaging a bad situation, but catching up to Sam...
Episode 3 spoilers
Can’t wait for the 5 minute episode 4 where Adam gets caught immediately /s
Ben and Adam did a pretty good job this episode of salvaging a bad situation, but catching up to Sam now is going to be a real challenge
Ep 5 spoilers Ditto. That game of marbles was epic! And what an amazing round too. That's going to be super hard to beat, and I suspect it just won him the competition... but we shall see. p.s. I...
Ep 5 spoilers
Ditto. That game of marbles was epic! And what an amazing round too. That's going to be super hard to beat, and I suspect it just won him the competition... but we shall see.
p.s. I hope Ben got the longest straw, since I enjoy watching him a bit more than Sam.
As always half the game depends on which random card they draw. There's no way they don't mess with the deck every now and then to make for a more interesting show. Would there be a way that we,...
As always half the game depends on which random card they draw. There's no way they don't mess with the deck every now and then to make for a more interesting show. Would there be a way that we, the audience, could be convinced they don't?
I don't think this is a "we" question as I don't think they script or mess with the deck or whatever. I personally wouldn't do that sort of thing either, so maybe this is just a matter of internal...
I don't think this is a "we" question as I don't think they script or mess with the deck or whatever.
I personally wouldn't do that sort of thing either, so maybe this is just a matter of internal conviction?
Yeah, I'm in the same camp. For every time there's a crazy game-changing coincidence that surely must have been scripted, there's a bunch of decisions and situations that go much as you'd expect...
Yeah, I'm in the same camp.
For every time there's a crazy game-changing coincidence that surely must have been scripted, there's a bunch of decisions and situations that go much as you'd expect and could easily be rigged to be more dramatic if they wanted to.
They're just building games that lend themselves to opportunities for clutch moments, capturing a metric ton of footage and relying on editing to focus in on the exciting stuff and gloss over the mundane.
Right, a *lot" of this is editing after the fact. There are plenty of card pulls, for example, that don't lend themselves to the dramatic irony/perfect key moment, so those draws aren't presented...
Right, a *lot" of this is editing after the fact. There are plenty of card pulls, for example, that don't lend themselves to the dramatic irony/perfect key moment, so those draws aren't presented as crucial moments with increased tension countered by the other person's saying something about how it would be bad if they drew that card right now.
When they do all that build up it's because they know it'll be good and they're all talking about the game all the time in the video so dozens of similar moments can get edited out instead of included.
I think there are two ways to look at it and decide it doesn't matter.
The people involved - you either trust them as ethical people or you don't. They know they get accused of scripting, they say they don't, so either you believe them based on their history, or not. This is the slightly more parasocial option. Some folks will not feel motivated by this, some will.
It's reality TV and it doesn't matter. If you don't have a parasocial connection here, then who cares? They certainly have fewer producers and writers than network or cable reality TV, and don't have other people controlling their "confessionals" or whatever. But even if they were doing it, do you find it entertaining? Does it actually matter what a few friends/business partners do to win a game of tag? If you don't trust it, don't watch it.
There's no way in edited footage to convince everyone that there's no shenanigans. So either accept the possibility, trust they won't, or give it up?
Final opinion (I watched this last week so apologies if my memory fails me.) Conceptually I thought this game was a cool idea, and it fits the location well. However in practice (as the season...
Final opinion
(I watched this last week so apologies if my memory fails me.)
Conceptually I thought this game was a cool idea, and it fits the location well. However in practice (as the season progressed) I found the design wanting.
The biggest issue was how little interaction there was between the chasers and the snaker, and how few challenges (blocks etc.) were actually used. Most cards were not only not used, they weren't even worth using, at all. It felt like the season consisted in a lot of waiting around or waiting in trains, and it showed in how most episodes contained a noticeable amount of repetition (footage of just the crew explaining the same thing again, since the "mind games" would have been the strong point of this design).
A combination of train schedules and the existence of (largely just) one high speed line meant that the map/graph actually contained much fewer meaningful choices than it appeared.
In the final portion, you could see how much the game was reliant on pure luck of the draw. They traveled across the country and no one could do anything one way or another until the right cards came up.
This is definitely going in the bottom half of my Jet Lag season ranking. My favorites remain Hide and Seek (the best!), Tag, the road trip in NZ, crossing North America starting in Alaska and the one in Australia where they had to buy territories (though that one could definitely be perfected). All show off the countries well, have plenty of card use and/or challenges, meaningful decisions (up to a point - those closed roads in NZ were disappointing) and feel balanced.
That said, despite weaker seasons/months I don't regret paying for Nebula and I decided just this month to continue my subscription. They're killing it with the exclusive programming, Abolish Everything was a riot. Haven't had time to watch the new show yet but looking forward to doing it soon.
100% agree with you. The idea behind this season was brilliant and had me super excited for it. But the game rules and cards definitely have some major issues they need to address if they intend...
100% agree with you. The idea behind this season was brilliant and had me super excited for it. But the game rules and cards definitely have some major issues they need to address if they intend on playing it again, IMO. And similar to you, this ended up being amongst my least favorite of their series so far because of those issues. I hope they can figure something out to make the snake game idea more dynamic and entertaining if they try it again though, since I really do love the concept. :/
The most interesting part is how they are playing around with games that require the full cast in attendance. I think those will be the best takeaway learnings from this season. The marbles game...
The most interesting part is how they are playing around with games that require the full cast in attendance. I think those will be the best takeaway learnings from this season. The marbles game when you could see their reactions was better for it.
Yeah, when they actually did interact with each other during the VS battles was when it was the most entertaining for me too. Speaking of which: Ep 6 spoiler I wonder if rather than the teams...
Yeah, when they actually did interact with each other during the VS battles was when it was the most entertaining for me too. Speaking of which:
Ep 6 spoiler
I wonder if rather than the teams being separated while playing the snake game, they could do the entire game like they did at the very end by having them all ride the same trains together. If they then changed the cards so that they resulted in more minor annoyances, diversions, and slow downs for the snake (similar to the end-game curses in Hide & Seek but in reverse), rather than total blocks/run enders, that would allow them to interact a lot more and potentially make each run way more fun to watch too. Then the game wouldn't be about the chasers trying to guess the snake's route, getting ahead of them only to have to wait around for the snake to arrive, and single interactions between them designed to stop the snake entirely every single time... but it would be more about them all just messing with each other for fun while traveling around the country together.
Ep 6 I actually had the opposite thought - what if they were allowed to split up? Both blockers take half the deck, can travel independently, can communicate, and can swap cards when they meet up...
Ep 6
I actually had the opposite thought - what if they were allowed to split up? Both blockers take half the deck, can travel independently, can communicate, and can swap cards when they meet up in the same station. This would make it much harder for the snaker to slip away and get ahead of them, forcing more minigames and winding paths that have a genuine chance of crashing.
Also, I think this would be the perfect game to play on a smaller scale - a city metro / tram / bus network or so.
All in all, interesting concept but definitely ranks lowly on my Jet Lag Tierlist. Hope they iterate on it, though!
@balooga once again, Sam is SEOUL FREAKING BACK
Every damn time. lol
I feel so seen.
Similarly, Adam is so back, never been more back, etc.
Both the season 14 trailer as well as the first episode are available on nebula now.
First episode is up on YouTube now:
We Played Snake Across South Korea
As in the other games, it's fun how the runner vastly overestimates the knowledge and foresight of the seekers.
Ben is also just a "silly little guy," and I feel that this really shows how true his self-assessment is.
Ben bases his runs (and life) on vibes and I'm all for it.
YouTube trailer
New season, and a new game! As usual, there was a game design episode of the podcast, so I'll include some bits from that in its own details section.
Game design discussion (no spoilers)
A good portion of what they talked about was summarised early in the first episode as they introduce the game from both the Snaker (I'm just going to call them the Snake for phone autocorrect reasons) and Blocker perspective, so a good amount of my notes aren't all that useful.
There are two major factors that went into the design of this game. The first is the location. Originally the team really wanted to do a season in Taiwan, but its rail network didn't lend itself to a fun game so they had to look elsewhere. South Korea's is pretty interconnected and small enough that you could make a game over the entire area. It also has a Y shape of high speed rail, which makes the map a little more dynamic to play on.
The second factor was looking at what the previous games had been, and seeing what variables can be changed.
Jet Lag is a travel game, so we can rule out games where both teams are stationary. There's also trouble if everyone has knowledge of where everyone is, as the ambiguity helps in these games. So what if they play into that? Make a game where the solo person is on the move, but nobody knows where anyone is. It makes a game about trying to predict where the solo person is going to go, and place challenges ahead of them. High risk, high reward.
Also being able to describe your game as Snake makes it extremely easy to get the vast majority of the idea across to an audience. The problem is with figuring out the last 10% of the game. That's where things like the cards come in. We'll see more of them throughout the season, so I'm not going to re-explain them here. Perhaps the most interesting part is how the battle challenges are weighted towards the Blockers, as a way of stopping the Snake. That's important, because just chasing the Snake isn't a good idea as you'll never get ahead of them.
They also mentioned a few other rules to prevent un-fun strategies, like there's a 20 hour limit on an individual run to prevent stalling. Since Ben went first, if he'd just claimed one segment and then waited out the rest of the time then he'd have the longest snake and win. Since he is already at a station the blockers wouldn't be able to place new challenges and it'd be game over.
One of the major challenges was the map they're playing on, for multiple reasons. Google Maps (and Apple's) isn't as well filled out, and the apps for the rail companies are apparently pretty bad. Not only that, but there's a lot of ongoing construction, so new lines might exist, old lines might have moved, and all sorts of other things. There was also a lot of agonising over where "nodes" (stations where there are multiple ways out) end up, especially when local lines join up to the same tracks as express lines but the express doesn't visit all stations, and so on.
Episode 1 spoilers
As I was watching the episode I wondered how much footage ends up on the cutting room floor for this game? Apparently the answer is a lot. In fact so much for cut that it was the first thing mentioned on this week's podcast episode besides Sam's "we are so back".
Adam and Sam start by going to Osong as it's a hub for the high speed rail network and if Ben went that way and they didn't block it then he'd get a very large distance very quickly. It did leave the eastern route open, but the trains there are less frequent. Ben decided not to go east because he wouldn't have been able to reach the east coast in time to have a solid run down the country without being blocked.
The Birthday Boat challenge was actually one of the last ones to be added, and it got added because Ben's birthday started as they crossed the international date line when flying to Korea... And then ended a few hours later. It just so happened to be the first challenge they drew from the deck. It's a shame they couldn't complete it there, but it sounds like it was either the wrong time of year or that waterway isn't for public use.
I think it's unfortunate for Sam and Adam that their train north left at the same time as Ben's train was scheduled to arrive, but Ben's train was slightly delayed. They mention on the podcast that this ended up being pretty normal, so close moves like this are less frequent as the game goes on. It was pretty lucky that they could get back to Osong within about an hour. I understand why they decided to play the battle challenge when they got back, but it looks like a rushed decision in the edit.
I haven't talked about Ben much. That's because there isn't a lot really going on for him. He decides to wait around and take a slow train, then wait around and take another slow train. Some of his reasoning makes it into the sit, and there's a little more discussion in the podcast, but not much. For a first run of the game it's not bad, but I hope that future runs are a little more dynamic. Ultimately, I think Ben's hesitancy throughout this episode is a safe strategy but not a winning one. Sure it would have led to a higher chance of being blocked, but he basically guaranteed that by taking the local lines. Yes, it's unfortunate for him that the Blockers got another battle challenge and he shouldn't have been planning around that, but I feel like this wasn't the strongest he could have been.
The Tuho was a fun challenge to end on. I like that the advantage to the Blockers comes from them being able to practice for a while. Adam noticed during practice that the game gets much harder as more sticks are inside the bowl, so Ben's decision to go second probably didn't help him. I think the battle challenges are definitely going to be the highlights of this season, so I'm excited to see what other challenges there are.
Ep 3 - We Played Snake Across South Korea
Episode 3 spoilers
After everything that could go wrong going wrong for the boys, it's nice to see something go right.
On the podcast Sam talks about his choice of taking the coastal route instead of the Inland one. It was a lot more attractive to have one long segment where the chasers didn't have information, but he couldn't have really planned for the tracker card. I don't think it was the wrong decision, but it was the most obvious one.
There's a brief mention that Sam was a big advocate for the rule about the distance only counting when you reach the next node. Unfortunately for him, that cost him a bunch of progress at the end there. It's not the first time a rule has come back to bite the person/people that advocated for it, but that's part of the game. Often the rules lead to more interesting decision making. I'm pretty sure the inland route would have been completely irrelevant if Sam's progress was counted continuously, as it gives the lest information to the chasers and doesn't carry as much risk.
The final battle challenge was a late addition by Amy, and I think it's an interesting one. You can pick a number that's arbitrarily high, but there's a physical limit on the minimum number of items. On the podcast they predict that online discussion would say that the numbers they picked were too low, but I think they were too high. If the chasers had both gone for very low numbers (like 1) then there's very little room for Sam to get in the middle. From the podcast talk it didn't seem like they had anything planned for the case of a tie, which is odd considering how good the team is as finding edge cases when making the rules.
Episode 3 spoilers
Yeah, I was surprised that the chasers didn't go for one or two objects. Lacking coordination, if the only goal is for the snaker to not get the middle number, both of the chasers taking a number at the floor of the possibility range without the possibility of a number between them would be an easy way to lock out the snaker.
Episode 3 spoilers
Can’t wait for the 5 minute episode 4 where Adam gets caught immediately /s
Ben and Adam did a pretty good job this episode of salvaging a bad situation, but catching up to Sam now is going to be a real challenge
It's out on Nebula :)
Episode 2!
Ep 4 - We Played Snake Across South Korea
Ep 5 - We Played Snake Across South Korea
Episode 5 spoilers
Team Adam, we are so back. We have never been more back
Ep 5 spoilers
Ditto. That game of marbles was epic! And what an amazing round too. That's going to be super hard to beat, and I suspect it just won him the competition... but we shall see.
p.s. I hope Ben got the longest straw, since I enjoy watching him a bit more than Sam.
As always half the game depends on which random card they draw. There's no way they don't mess with the deck every now and then to make for a more interesting show. Would there be a way that we, the audience, could be convinced they don't?
I don't think this is a "we" question as I don't think they script or mess with the deck or whatever.
I personally wouldn't do that sort of thing either, so maybe this is just a matter of internal conviction?
Edited for clarity
Yeah, I'm in the same camp.
For every time there's a crazy game-changing coincidence that surely must have been scripted, there's a bunch of decisions and situations that go much as you'd expect and could easily be rigged to be more dramatic if they wanted to.
They're just building games that lend themselves to opportunities for clutch moments, capturing a metric ton of footage and relying on editing to focus in on the exciting stuff and gloss over the mundane.
Right, a *lot" of this is editing after the fact. There are plenty of card pulls, for example, that don't lend themselves to the dramatic irony/perfect key moment, so those draws aren't presented as crucial moments with increased tension countered by the other person's saying something about how it would be bad if they drew that card right now.
When they do all that build up it's because they know it'll be good and they're all talking about the game all the time in the video so dozens of similar moments can get edited out instead of included.
I think there are two ways to look at it and decide it doesn't matter.
The people involved - you either trust them as ethical people or you don't. They know they get accused of scripting, they say they don't, so either you believe them based on their history, or not. This is the slightly more parasocial option. Some folks will not feel motivated by this, some will.
It's reality TV and it doesn't matter. If you don't have a parasocial connection here, then who cares? They certainly have fewer producers and writers than network or cable reality TV, and don't have other people controlling their "confessionals" or whatever. But even if they were doing it, do you find it entertaining? Does it actually matter what a few friends/business partners do to win a game of tag? If you don't trust it, don't watch it.
There's no way in edited footage to convince everyone that there's no shenanigans. So either accept the possibility, trust they won't, or give it up?
Ep 6 - We Played Snake Across South Korea
Final opinion
(I watched this last week so apologies if my memory fails me.)
Conceptually I thought this game was a cool idea, and it fits the location well. However in practice (as the season progressed) I found the design wanting.
The biggest issue was how little interaction there was between the chasers and the snaker, and how few challenges (blocks etc.) were actually used. Most cards were not only not used, they weren't even worth using, at all. It felt like the season consisted in a lot of waiting around or waiting in trains, and it showed in how most episodes contained a noticeable amount of repetition (footage of just the crew explaining the same thing again, since the "mind games" would have been the strong point of this design).
A combination of train schedules and the existence of (largely just) one high speed line meant that the map/graph actually contained much fewer meaningful choices than it appeared.
In the final portion, you could see how much the game was reliant on pure luck of the draw. They traveled across the country and no one could do anything one way or another until the right cards came up.
This is definitely going in the bottom half of my Jet Lag season ranking. My favorites remain Hide and Seek (the best!), Tag, the road trip in NZ, crossing North America starting in Alaska and the one in Australia where they had to buy territories (though that one could definitely be perfected). All show off the countries well, have plenty of card use and/or challenges, meaningful decisions (up to a point - those closed roads in NZ were disappointing) and feel balanced.
That said, despite weaker seasons/months I don't regret paying for Nebula and I decided just this month to continue my subscription. They're killing it with the exclusive programming, Abolish Everything was a riot. Haven't had time to watch the new show yet but looking forward to doing it soon.
100% agree with you. The idea behind this season was brilliant and had me super excited for it. But the game rules and cards definitely have some major issues they need to address if they intend on playing it again, IMO. And similar to you, this ended up being amongst my least favorite of their series so far because of those issues. I hope they can figure something out to make the snake game idea more dynamic and entertaining if they try it again though, since I really do love the concept. :/
The most interesting part is how they are playing around with games that require the full cast in attendance. I think those will be the best takeaway learnings from this season. The marbles game when you could see their reactions was better for it.
Yeah, when they actually did interact with each other during the VS battles was when it was the most entertaining for me too. Speaking of which:
Ep 6 spoiler
I wonder if rather than the teams being separated while playing the snake game, they could do the entire game like they did at the very end by having them all ride the same trains together. If they then changed the cards so that they resulted in more minor annoyances, diversions, and slow downs for the snake (similar to the end-game curses in Hide & Seek but in reverse), rather than total blocks/run enders, that would allow them to interact a lot more and potentially make each run way more fun to watch too. Then the game wouldn't be about the chasers trying to guess the snake's route, getting ahead of them only to have to wait around for the snake to arrive, and single interactions between them designed to stop the snake entirely every single time... but it would be more about them all just messing with each other for fun while traveling around the country together.
Ep 6
I actually had the opposite thought - what if they were allowed to split up? Both blockers take half the deck, can travel independently, can communicate, and can swap cards when they meet up in the same station. This would make it much harder for the snaker to slip away and get ahead of them, forcing more minigames and winding paths that have a genuine chance of crashing.
Also, I think this would be the perfect game to play on a smaller scale - a city metro / tram / bus network or so.
All in all, interesting concept but definitely ranks lowly on my Jet Lag Tierlist. Hope they iterate on it, though!