Overbooked Game

Do you ever look at a board game and become extremely overwhelmed with the number of pieces and parts? Well, that is how I felt when I first opened Overbooked by Jumbo.

Overbooked is for 1 to 4 players and suitable for ages 8 plus. It honestly looks way more complicated than it actually is and I will hopefully help you to understand it in an easier way.

When you open the box it is very overwhelming.

Inside you will find

Departure hall game board

4 service desks

4 double-sided aeroplanes

4 aircraft steps

81 passenger cards

15 event cards

24 dinner vouchers

150 passengers ( 30 of each colour)

1 control tower

1 baggage carousel

1 winners badge

8 wooden cubes in 4 colours

4 checklists

The rule booklet

The first time you play you need to pop out the passengers and the dinner vouchers. You also need to build the control tower.

I will be honest there are a few bits that you don’t actually need and the control tower is one of them. You only use this to mark who is going to go first. You also don’t really need the baggage carousel or the wooden cubes as these are only used to score the game but more on that later.

The double-sided aeroplane cards are for if you are playing 1-3 players or 4 players.

When you are all set up it should look like the below. The aim of the game is to fill your aeroplane with passengers to score the most points and fulfil the passenger cards.

The passenger cards show how many passengers who need to place and how you need to place them. If you have played the game before there are added elements that you can use which are shown on the corners of the cards.

The event cards are also for use once you become a frequent flyer (ie you played the game a lot) because they really do add a whole new level of difficulty.

To play the game you take it in turn to choose a passenger card. You can choose the one nearest the gate for free or you can place dinner vouchers on the skipped cards. If the card you choose has a dinner voucher on it you can keep that one. You then add another passenger card to the carousel so there are always four cards to choose from.

Place your passengers according to your passenger card. If you have to remove a passenger already placed on your aeroplane then move them to the aircraft steps.

The game ends when a passenger type runs out.

You then use the checklist, baggage carousels and wooden cubes to work out your scores.

Red passengers are in love and want to be seated as a couple. 5 points for every couple no points if more than 2 red passengers next to each other.

White passengers are children and need to be surrounded by adults. 3 points for every surrounded child.

Blue passengers are a rugby team. The larger the group of them the better. 1 point for every player in your largest group of blue passengers. Double points if you have the largest group of everyone.

Yellow passengers are friends travelling together. The larger the group of them the better. 1 point for every player in your largest group of yellow passengers. Double points if you have the largest group of everyone.

Green passengers are senior citizens travelling as a group. The larger the group the better. 1 point for every player in your largest group of green passengers. Double points if you have the largest group of everyone.

1 point for every two dinner vouchers

-2 points for every passenger on the aeroplane steps

-2 points for the player with the most people on the aeroplane steps

-1 point for every empty seat.

You use the wooden cubes on the baggage carousel to add up all the points. Totally pointless really as you can just do this on a piece of paper or a calculator.

The winner of the game is the one with the highest number of points. With this in mind, you should place your players tactically. Creating couples is a great way to wrack up points easily as is surrounding children with adults.

Overbooked is a fun game but it does require concentration and an awful lot of pieces although as you can see it isn’t as complicated as it looks.