Great game and price — Be sure to read the rules carefully.

As with all games, reading the directions completely and carefully is definitely recommended. If the game seems easier than expected, you’re likely playing it wrong. It is meant to be difficult.

We started out breezing through the game because the reader of the rules missed the part where you have to keep rolling (everyone who’s playing) until you achieve whatever the card required to ford the river (usually, rolling an even). This was not handled right until half-way through the game when I suggested that it might be different–and suggested what the rules actually indicate without having seen them–and it turned out to be right.

So we played the rest of that game with the proper rules and quickly died off. We played it again a second time with correct rules and 4/6 of us died off within the first 15-20 trail pieces. And then, miraculously, the remaining 2 people (both Cray Cray Games designers, btw) won the game due to some amazingly consistent even die rolls. We, at least, survived the Oregon Trail.

The Lesson: Kill off the weak first. (That’s a terrible lesson.