Carpet Racers Thoughts From Gen Con 2026 Review. Blind Deduction Racing!?
Transcript
What does that even mean, Bowers Game Corner?
Ahoy there, YouTube. We're back again for another Gen Con Explosion blog coverage here live at Gen Con 2026 with a good friend Adam.
I hope.
And we're here to thank our sponsor to on ero.com, one of the greatest Kickstarter services on the planet. Check out the link down below. I thought that before they sponsored the channel, I dang sure think it now. But, we were lucky enough to go to the Indianapolis Museum of Children or something across the street from Gen Con in the tea room. And they were showcasing a bunch of games from Big Troubadour, but Capstone Games is bringing it over here. And the one we checked out first was Carpet Racers. This one's coming out at Essen 2026 tentatively. It's for three to five players. Takes a 30 minutes to play. It's a racing game where you don't know which car your car is. But, we're going to take you through to the table, show you what it looks like, run you through a little turn of it, then we'll come back and give you our thoughts after our first impression at four players.
All right, we're going to take you through a turn of Carpet Racers coming out at Essen later this year. We want to mention this is a prototype copy, so everything you see in front of you might be subject to change. Now, the first thing you need to know is you don't actually know what's underneath here, but you have a car that you were trying to get to be the fastest car at the end of the game. So, on a turn, which is simple, you have a player reference here, you're going to move. So, you're going to play a card. You're going to have either three or four cards in your hand. And the cards are really quite simple. They're going to have a couple things on them. First, it shows you how many spaces you're going to move. Then over here, it shows you who you are going to move. And you can move these two vehicles in any combination of this number right here. Now, why you're doing that is because along with the track, there's special spots that you might want to land at. It's almost like a worker placement except with these vehicles. Because if you happen to land a bus here, so let's just say you played a card. Now, this card, so we get to move the green and the yellow. So, if we move the bus one space here, and then we move the car. Where's the green car?
It's somewhere five spaces. We get to do the actions of it. So, let's just say we 1 2 3, we decide we're going to go through here. 4 5. So, that was the first thing we did on our card. The next thing you're going to do is you're going to resolve the traps, which are these little yellow things right here. Now, in Mario Kart fashion, you're also going to have these things pre-loaded up here. You'll be able to drop them off whenever you want. Some are good or some are bad. So, you want to try and remember where they are because you might want to come scoop them up. So, in this instance, we deal with these two over here, and we say, "All right, the green the green car, which we don't know if it's us." Uh this is stuff that's going to happen to us. So, first uh that's a bad thing, and then this one is a good thing because we're going to move on this track up here into the fast you race up on this track. Like to get a larger hand size, and you get to use more actions.
So, really cool system uh whether or not you want to press your luck to try and push forward or whether or not you want to kind of get up the special abilities.
The most important thing on this track is that if it's this symbol, you get to look at someone else's car. And so, that gives you information on, "Okay, I know what that person is now." And you take one of their tokens and put it on your board, so you know that you can look at that at any time.
Yeah, not a memory aspect there, which I really do appreciate. Also, that's part of the pressure luck aspect because yeah, you can accumulate more knowledge or you can just be like, "I think I'm yellow." We just cram forward as yellow. Now, the other cool aspect that we haven't mentioned yet cuz we were talking about it there, but we got lost cuz I think we both like this a good deal. We'll talk about that somewhere else. But, is that that if you're playing with less players, these are still out, and they can win the game, which is really cool. We played a game and they did actually the the robot won in a four-player game, which is really neat. But, back to your turn. So, you deal with the traps, and then you do whatever actions you have to land on. So, this one doesn't have a spot, but this one means we go up one on that track, and then we go down here. We do the card effect because these are multi-use cards. So, now we get to do this ability right here. It's on the back of the rule booklet, much love. And this once again uh is a prototype, so they're going to spruce things up. And then you do what's called you can There's some other stuff that could might happen, but mostly you're going to manage your cards. And you discard a card if you'd like, and then draw back up to your hand size, and then it moves to the next player. And eventually what's going to happen is one of the cars is going to cross the finish line for the third time, at which point after that happens, that turn is going to be complete, and the game is going to end.
And then you're finally going to get a look down here and see which car you are. That car is then going to move backward the number of spaces that you have of these tokens right here, but also move forward the number of boosts you have. So, if I would have got lucky and I was actually accumulate a whole bunch of these pink boosts, which once again there's actions around that will let you do it, my car is going to move forward that much. And then after all the players have revealed their cards and use their boost tokens and their stop tokens and whatever, you're going to see who's the furthest along. They win the game, and that is the upcoming Carpet Racers. All righty then, we're talking about Carpet Racers from Pictorama Door But, I believe it's coming out from Capstone Games next year at Essen. What are our final thoughts after a first impression? Now, I do want to mention we did one rule wrong that we were taught, which did impact the game a good deal. Cuz part of the fun of this game is you don't know what car you are, and then there's also going to just be random cars if you're not playing with the maximum player count. So, uh someone was supposed to look at your
at my my car, but no one looked at my car. He looked at the robot or the you know, no player card, which gave him that information, but like I think the idea of the game is that you see what other people are doing and can use that to to kind of as clues to figure out what your car is. And so, I had a little bit less knowledge than maybe the rest of you did.
Yeah, and that for sure. So, this is probably the worst game you play at this I would imagine with four players.
Ideally it would be five players.
Well, I mean even at four players, if you would have done it correctly, I think you would have a better experience.
Oh, for sure. Yeah.
Okay.
I mean, I I had a good experience. I I enjoyed it.
Yeah, we'll get there. We'll get there. So, let's focus on the cons first. Everything you didn't enjoy about the game, game play wise.
I think I would like a smidge bit more variety in the power ups. I like the power ups. I think it's a cool system. I like a lot going on. I just want a little bit more variety. Like I I think that would increase the Mario Kart feel, which I think would be really nice.
Yeah. Um I don't know. It seemed like there was a lot of stuff that you had to keep track of kind of on your turn, but it wasn't like unmanageable. Like you just got used to it. It was like at the beginning I was kind of like, "Oh, I do I do this now or do I do that after it?" And like the order of whether you do the traps first or uh do you do the little icon first, etc. And
Did you utilize the memory aspect of the game much try to set yourself up in future turns for success? Cuz I tried to and I quickly forgot because I really like the I thought the choices were interesting and I thought they were quick. But I did I didn't feel like I really
what you saw?
I did. I consistently thought forgot what I thought.
But did you know that you can go and Oh, that you can go down there?
like the traps cuz you would like split the good ones. There's good ones and there's bad ones.
I only remembered where the good ones were so that I know that all the other ones were bad ones, right? So, I don't have to try and remember everything. I just remember where the good ones were and avoid the rest of them.
Also, we should mention we did not get the opportunity to play on the back of the board, which has a whole cool thing with a ramp and it looked
And a catapult.
Yeah, can you you remember one of the things on that one?
Yeah, I think it was like when you get to the catapult I I you draw a card or something and then it catapults you that far or something.
it had a die. I thought it had a I think it had a special die that you rolled.
Some way it randomized how far you got chucked.
So, the game ends if you cross the the finish line the third time. You apply your boost. I thought that was a really cool system. Like it's not just two wins, but it's like, "Oh, if you got enough boosts, or if you got picked up too many traps along the way." I think it's going to be exciting nearly every time you reveal.
Right, cuz there's like negative ones that make you go back and positive ones that make you go forward. And yeah, I I really enjoyed that. And it wasn't like it wasn't points out or anything. It was just like these are straightforward, whichever car is farthest to the front wins.
I thought it was an interesting spin on deduction. I thought it was a good game, but I think I would imagine probably by the time it comes out creep up to very good to great for me. I imagine that that back board probably be the one that like, "Yeah, that's the one I want to play with every time." And hopefully hopefully there's some more cards and stuff in the pipeline. I think that would I do
And the game board was beautiful. I mean, that
It did. It had the artwork the artwork spectacular on it. So, uh, first impression it was three to five. Do you think you'd want to play it with three? I think I would. I don't think I'd mind. I think I'd actually like it a little bit better at three.
Really?
Partially be Well, I enjoy this game because you can kind of just you can just lean you don't have to try to do the deduction. You can just kind of just race really fast and hope and try and predict based on what other people are doing. And I think people like me who like doing that are really going to enjoy it. But, as
Because you're just going to straight from the get-go be like
The bus is going all the way. And then maybe like you start to see like somebody else like, "Oh, man, I might as well go on the bus, too." It's like I I think I think this is going to appeal to a lot of people.
Yeah.
I think that when this comes out, the version you see will probably be a great game. That and Capstone Games has a really good track record. But, if this were a physical game right now, would you want to buy it?
Oh, absolutely. Yeah.
Likewise. That is Carpet Racers. If it looks like it might be your cup of tea, be sure to check out the giant car the Board Game Geek link down below. Also, if you enjoyed the content, please be sure to click on the subscribe button down below. And in the comments below, let me know if you could have one car in the world, what car do you want? Anything.
Car? Uh, I want a monster truck. Yeah, probably like Grave Digger or something.
Like the Grave Digger?
Uh, no. Uh, the Son of Grave Digger.
So, he'd be his own car. So, he would be a thief.
No, I mean, that's one of the
Oh, so you would be a
As they get everything I want, uh, I want a car that could also turn into a boat. I want an RV houseboat combo. I'm sure that exists for some billionaire somewhere who custom-made it. That's what I want. I want to I want that. Let me know in the comments below your vehicle of choice. As always, thanks for your time, YouTube. This video is brought to you by all of my amazing Patreon supporters. And I would love it if you would join their ranks and have your name immortalized in the end of many of my videos for the end of time. But, consider for only a dollar a month, and as always, thanks for stopping by.