Far north, in a remote winter country, rivers are frozen most of the year. When the villages along the river are eventually accessible, a small river cruise company offers exotic tours such as polar bear safaris, reindeer rides, ice fishing and more. Lucky tourists might even get the chance to see the Northern Lights.
You work as a tour guide and try to attract tourists to your guide boats for spectacular excursions.
Riverside is a different kind of roll-and-write game: the game comes with a modular board, which puts together the route for the game. On a river cruise boat, everyone follows the same route, but you can take your tourists on different tours. You can plan ahead, but be careful, the dice may force you to change your plans.
You start each round by rolling dice into a common pool. At the same time, each player chooses a die of a specific color (without physically taking it) and fills the seats on the matching companion boat on their own player sheet. Each time they completed a row of seats, they sold a group ticket in the corresponding color (excursion). The longer the line, the more points they get. In addition, this ticket is valid for the rest of the game: every time they go on an excursion to a village of this color, they take this group with them to earn even more points. The player with the most points wins the game.
Each dice color represents tourists with a preference for a certain type of excursion. The transparent green die is "wild" and represents the Northern Lights, something everyone wants to see.
Riverside offers tough decision-making within a short playing time: some rows are short with low points and bonuses, while other rows are long with higher points and bonuses. Which one do you start filling? Within each guide boat you have to score higher and higher, so taking too many tourists on your first excursions can be fatal. Players are rewarded if they manage to please all five types of tourists, so maybe you should score a new color instead of scoring really high in another color? Higher dice represent tourists that freeze and cost fire symbols to get. The "wild" green die always costs fire symbols! You have a limited number of fire symbols to use, so when is the right time to use them?