Pipeline creator reveals two-player spiritual spin-off Curious Cargo
Cut-throat couriering.
Form an unstoppable shipping empire in Curious Cargo, the upcoming board game from the designer and publisher of Pipeline.
Curious Cargo is a two-player board game by Ryan Courtney that sees players butting heads over a collection of strange products in high demand. From glowing crystalline to a glutenous green substance, the cargo is in need of a shipping company to transport it - the players will be competing with one another to see who can supply the most.
Players will look to develop their company’s infrastructure to make it more capable of holding and transporting goods. They’ll place tiles to form a network of conveyor belts and pipes to transport the cargo, requesting shipping trucks at key moments so that they can maximise the quantity they deliver. Players will have to nail the timing of when they receive and ship cargo in order to score the most points possible.
Both players will be trying to construct a cohesive shipping network with goods flowing in and out at an efficient rate but, at any point, an opponent may throw a spanner in the works by sending custom tokens to the other player’s network, disrupting their plans. Whichever player successfully gathers the most points by the end of the game is the winner.
Curious Cargo’s network-making puzzle is based on the tile-laying system in Courtney’s acclaimed debut Pipeline. The board game about running an oil refinery business was widely proclaimed as one of the best board games released last year. Curious Cargo halves Pipeline’s maximum player count, as well as removing the game’s heavier economic strategy elements and reducing its one- to two-hour playtime to just 30 minutes.
Players can choose to play the two-player title in either day mode, presented as an introductory experience with just two colours of cargo, or night mode, which introduces purple crystalline to make the game more challenging.
Capstone Games, the publisher responsible for releasing Pipeline and other titles including train board games Irish Gauge and Ride the Rails, will release Curious Cargo this October at a price of $35/£27.