A mechanical engineer who gave up the rat race to travel has created a board game based on his adventures around the world.

Marcus Lane, who runs Hove-based Doofer Designs, wanted Can You Make It As A Backpacker? to reflect the reality of cheap travel.

The game is being sold in 380 shops in the UK, including big-name outdoors retailers such as Millets, Blacks and Field & Trek.

The game, which sells at £24.99, is the first in the Can You Make It As A ... ? format. Another is in the pipeline but details are being kept under wraps.

Mr Lane, 33, hopes CYMIA ... A Backpacker? will find an audience with gap-year students, experienced travellers and thousands of armchair Michael Palins.

Players must do the "visa run", find accommodation, see the sights, survive dodgy public transport and go drinking in bar while keeping an eye out for their bag.

The game, a race across six continents, involves travelling on a budget, working in summer jobs and even phoning home to blag some extra cash off mum and dad.

Shoreham-born Marcus launched product development company Doofer Designs in Holland Road in 2004 after three years living out of a rucksack.

Before that he worked for seven years as a chartered mechanical engineer, having graduated with a first class engineering degree from Brunel University in 1994.

He said: "I had been working primarily as a senior product design engineer when I decided to buy a one-way bus ticket east and take on new challenges. I had become despondent with the rat race.

"Travelling overland with a rucksack, some savings and a bus ticket from London to Poland was the start of an amazing adventure that took me to 21 countries."

Marcus wanted to create a game which offered an insight into backpacking that was difficult to grasp from travel books.

He said: "When I was knocking back a home-made rocket fuel in a remote Asian village one day, I realised what a fascinating yet surreal world I was travelling in.

"I had read books that touched on some of the real issues of backpacking but nothing came close to telling me the full story. I decided to find another way to teach people what they were in for.

"As a child, I had a huge map of the world on my bedroom wall. I used to stare at countries and imagine what it would be like to live there. In 2001 I finally plucked up the courage to turn my back on a career.

"Within months I'd spent a night on the Great Wall of China, been turned away from the only Siberian hotel for 40 miles, watched the sun rise at 2am from a deserted Scandinavian beach, ridden on a Kenyan bus only for the driver to fall asleep at the wheel and spent too long in some of the most horrific toilets I had ever seen."

Tuesday, January 10, 2006