Joyride: Full Throttle Preview

Steve Godfrey
8 hours ago
8 min read

Joyride: Full Throttle

Player Count: 2-6

You’ll like this if you like: Joyride, Gaslands, Thunder road Vendetta

This is a preview copy. See our review policy here

This is a preview copy of the game and as such all components, rules and art are in prototype form and are subject to change.

The campaign goes live 28th October 2025 and you can find it here.

By Steve Godfrey

There’s nothing like the feeling (in gaming circles anyway) of knowing that you’ve finally got everything for a game. I’ve got it all for Joyride, the Turbo box, the upgraded wooden components, and it feels good knowing that I can sit back and relax knowing that a) it is neat and b) unlike a certain mermaid, my collection is indeed complete... What? What do you mean they’re releasing a new standalone expansion that can be mixed in with everything else? Oh, come on!

Normally at this point I’d do a brief rules overview but I’m sure there will already be enough content on the Gamefound page on how to play. Alternatively I have a review of Joyride Duel: Next Gen in which I go over the rules here The only thing I’ll touch on here are the new rules for this box. First is the new Pivot action (Friends fans, now’s your cue). It’s nice and simple, basically, move the back of your car round the number of spaces you're told to with the only caveat being it all has to be in the same direction. So no waggling your backside back and forth like you're trying to taunt your opponents. It's the same as the donut ability of the Junker in the core box. It's a great little addition to the rules that has helped me out of more than a few scrapes, and got me into a few as well.

There is a new recharging rule for 5-6 player games. If you are in fifth place across the line, you get to recharge your abilities, repair a damage, and take a random item. Sixth place does the same as fifth place but instead gets to choose an item.

That's it for the new core rules changes. Everything else is game mode/track specific, so I'll get into those in a bit.

“On your left!”

In this new box comes a double-sided board with two new maps: the beach and the mall. The boards are the same size as the base game, so you don’t have to worry that just because it’s a higher player count, it's not going to take up more of your table. Each map is designed to accommodate the higher player count, and each side has ten prebuilt scenarios across all player counts. Just as with the last iterations, though, you can feel free to create your own custom maps. We also get some new terrain to try and avoid/slam your opponents into. The tire barriers, while not as devastating as their solid wall counterparts, can still make life a bit difficult. When you hit one, take damage and steer once. It doesn’t use your steer for the turn. Not the most devastating, and the steer may actually help in some cases, but you’ve got to ask yourself if it’s worth damaging yourself just to bounce around the map like a pinball. Oooooh, a new pinball table map could be fun!

Like most beaches and malls, you’ll find an abundance of trolleys in a variety of different states of wear. When you hit these, you treat them like cars in a collision, except in this case, sideswiping them reduces your speed by one. However, you treat head-on collisions as a rear-end rather than having the thing you're crashing into make a decision over how it resolves. This makes sense since trolleys aren’t sentient and can’t make decisions like humans can... yet!

And last but not least, Portals. Simply enter one as you would a checkpoint and then come out of the other one in another part of the board or across a multiple board setup. These are just great fun. It’s fun to use them as a shortcut across the board, but it’s even more fun to cheekily knock one of your opponent's cars into one, sending them even further from their next checkpoint… not that we at WhatBoardGame would ever condone that sort of nefarious behaviour… well, not all the time anyway.

“If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball”

With this box comes an abundance of new weapons, well six in fact, and I have to say this batch includes my now favorite weapon in the game. You have a Nitro 2.0, which penalizes you for rolling after moving. A nice little nod to all those “oh I forgot to roll my nitro, can I do it now” people. You know who you are. Marbles make fun use of the new pivot rule by throwing your back end out if you drive over them. Dumbbells reduce movement when you drive over them. The Thumper (not the bunny from Bambi) causes a one-move collision, good for annoying your opponent's plans with a little nudge. The wrench is a new type of item that can help or hinder by either shifting a car up a gear and healing a damage or shifting it down and taking a damage. This one always garnered confused looks at first until you mention that there’s a team mode. All of them are fun in their own right and are great to mix and match with the rest of the items. Here’s my favorite though. The Volleybomb. Normally, when an explosive item hits something, it explodes immediately, meaning that you need to have someone in your front sights to fire at. The Volleybomb can do the same; however, when it first hits a space, you can choose instead to fire it from that first space in any direction. It means you can ricochet off a wall and potentially hit someone behind you or around a corner, and it’s honestly a ton of fun. It makes it usable in a lot more situations than a lot of the fired items. Now, if the designers can make a pinball, multi-ball version to go with my pinball table map, that’d be awesome! I’ll take a full credit and all royalties by bank transfer for that, please and thank you.

More modes than Edna Mode

Now it’s time to talk about the thing that I think we’re all really here for: the extended player count. Joyride has always felt like a game that should be played in a bigger group, and in fact, many people on the BGG forums have come up with their own ways of incorporating 5 & 6 player games. I’ve tried one myself, and it worked pretty well, but with the way the starting positions would have to work, it could potentially imbalance the game, if you care about such things. However, it’s great to have this version that is purpose-built for this player count and levels the playing field. Not only that, but there are a lot of people out there who won’t want to try customized setups and some that won’t even be aware of BGG and the fact that they're on there.

So what’s a game of Joyride like at those higher player counts? Well, it’s just chaos, isn’t it? But such beautiful chaos. The maps can accommodate more players, but since the size of the maps is the same, the extra cars on the board just make for more interaction, which means more collisions and more targets for those items. With more cars on the track, dropped items now have more victims, and more cars mean that there are potentially fewer opportunities to outright avoid them. Now you have to decide if it’s worth driving over something or just causing a collision. The extended player count also gives fired items more targets. Beforehand, fired items could be a bit more situational. You needed to have a straight shot, and with fewer cars, it could be difficult. Now, though, there are a lot more opportunities to score a hit and do some damage. What I love about this is that it just ramps everything up. It has the potential to make those collisions more impactful, obstacles (including cars) are now trickier to get around, near misses even nearer, and when you do manage to squeeze through a small gap in, say, a three-car obstruction, it makes it all the sweeter.

Teamwork make the dreamwork (if the dream is demolishing your friends cars)

That level of chaos may not be for everyone, well maybe not in an all vs all game. But maybe team mode is more up your street. The base game had a team mode and the same goes for this version. The general team mode works the same as the base game but now there is a new way for teams to play. Set up the games as you normally would (I’m assuming a six player game here but it also works at other player counts.) Randomly give each player a fans token, there are two for each team. Players with matching tokens are on the same team. Place the Superfan tokens next to the first checkpoint. The game is then played normally with one major change. It’s the superfan that needs to complete the laps and go through the checkpoints, not the cars. The first player of each team to go though the first checkpoint picks up the super fan and carries them in an item slot. From now on you only keep track of which checkpoints and laps the super fan has completed, not the cars. At any point a car can drop the superfan in their rear arc and their team mate can pick them up by driving into that space. You can also pass them off to your team mate if they are in a space in your rear arc. I like to think of them leaping from car to car like something from, I’m assuming a fast and furious film (I’ve only seen the first one)

I really like this mode. If you play a normal team setup then there’s a good chance that one of you would go for the win and the other would play demolition derby and distract the others and not worry about checkpoints. Which is great fun, but if their teammate gets derailed then the other player may not be in a position to take over and win. Here though it doesn’t matter. You can still play that previous tactic but now both of you are able to pick up the slack should one of you get in trouble.

New cars, now with extra punny goodness.

Last but not least, we have a new lineup of drivers, which now brings your total number of potential drivers up to 15! You have the Van Lifers, the Mall Cop, the Lowrider, the Food Truck, the Drifter, and the Delivery Van. All of them are great, but my favorites are definitely the Lowrider, who comes with a doggy companion that you can put on the track and makes people swerve off course; the Mall Cop, because the idea of what is essentially a golf buggy overtaking a sports car will never stop being amusing to me; and the Food Truck that has its own ketchup mechanic… what, did you expect me not to like a car with a dad joke? This one was practically made for me.

The designers and publishers at Rebellion Unplugged are evil geniuses. Normally, I’d make a logical and well-thought-out argument as to who should and shouldn’t get this. But I’m having a hard time making an argument as to who shouldn’t. Well, let’s start with the easy one. If you don’t like Joyride in general, then don’t back this. It’s the same game; it doesn’t add anything that’ll make you change your mind. That’s it. Other than that, I’ve got nothing to say as to why you shouldn’t at least check this out. If you don’t own Joyride but want to, then this version is as perfect a place to start as any of the others, with the added bonus of the higher player count. If you already own at least one version of Joyride and love it and are happy with the player count, just treat this as a “more stuff” expansion. If you love Joyride but don’t own it yet, then this will work just as well as a first box.

Again If you're interested in checking out the campaign then you can find it here.

Right, I’m off to soundproof my house since I’m sure the endless shouts of PIVOT! is gonna start to disturb the neighbours.