Pathfinder Tracking Game

Can you work your way through a maze faster than your opponent?

Pathfinder, the Two Player Tracking Game, is perfect for anyone who enjoys building or traveling through mazes. I must have spent hours playing this game with my friend Leanne when I was a kid. We’d set up the most elaborate trails you possibly could using a grid and little plastic barrier chips. Two bright kids trying to outdo each other with a blind maze.

How Do You Play the Pathfinder Tracking Game

At first glance, Pathfinder looks a little like Battleship. You have a playing board on each side of a divider. Instead of ships, you build a maze. The board is laid out in a grid (in fact, it’s called the home grid), with slots on all sides of each square to slide in rectangular barrier chips. You also get a tracking board that looks like the home grid. (Unlike Battleship, this board is placed alongside the home grid, otherwise, the pieces would fall off). Each player is also given these red chips or disks to trace their path. Finally, there are tall pawns and short pawns.

pathfinder Start the game by creating a maze on your hidden home grid. There must be an opening along the left side of the board… and the player must be able to move through to the end. All the way to the end. No cheating! Your opponent does the same.

Setting up a maze looks like this…

On your turn, you have to attempt to enter the maze. Because the board is laid out like a grid, call out your entry point… for example B1 or C1. If you can go, keep track path on your tracking board with a pawn and tracking dots on your tracking board (the one next to the home board.) You may continue to move for as long as you aren’t hitting a barrier…. Forward, backward, up or down (never diagonally). When you hit a barrier, you put a barrier marking the spot on your tracking board, and your turn ends. Now your opponent is up.

The game goes back and forth until someone reaches the end of the maze.

Simple, but it can be insidious.

This is an old school game, but don’t let that stop you. The game is great for kids, and works well for grown-up kids too.