You and your fellow forest spirits watch intently, will your chosen champions succeed. It is a contest for territory and of course more importantly...nuts and in the end, only one type of bird will fly to the top and the others will be put to flight. This is the story of Birdie Fight by Kocchiya and Designer Yuo.
In the tradition of many made in Japan board games, Biridie Fight is a small, short and sweet game that has artwork that reminds players of days when one is just relaxing in the park watching nature go by. This, on top of its simple yet thoughtful gameplay provides an experience that is cliche to say for anything Japanese but feels most Zen like.
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Birdie Fight is a one to four player hand management game. The game is played over two rounds and starts by setting up the scoring nut tokens randomly on each row and column of a five by five grid. Then one card is revealed in the middle of the grid. Players then get a number of cards depending on the number of players in the game from the draw deck and then the fight is on.
The way a player's turn goes is deadly simple, you just play a card from your hand onto the grid adjacent (not diagonally) to any existing card on the grid. The cards comes in the form of four distinct bird colours and ranges from one to seven. In a four player game, an Owl card that is mixed into the deck too, which can be played to replace any existing card on the grid and allows the player to move the existing card elsewhere on the grid, which adds a lot of new decisions to a four player game.
A round ends when the whole grid is filled and then scoring is done. Each row and column is checked to see which colour bird has the highest total and that bird is awarded the respective nut token onto its picture on the game's box cover, which is both for easy scoring and is aesthetically pleasing.
The unique factor that elevates the game though is that if there is a tie between the highest totals in a row or column, then next highest total is the winner of the nut token. Thus middle and low number cards now have just as much value as a higher number card in the game.
After that is done, you now show the last card in your hand and that is your chosen champion (The colour of the bird) and add that bird's total score to the value of the card you have shown. This can be important as even though usually, this number will be insignificant compared to the total of the nut tokens but if everybody has chosen the same colour bird as their champion, then the number on your last card will decide who has the highest total.
Birdie Fight is a fun, zen like game that comes with a decent amount of tactical and strategic choices that are most satisfying and has worked with every group I have played it with and whose artwork is so good even passerbys stop to look at the game in progress.
So come fly by Brajkishore blind at HarbourFront and pick up this little bundle of naturally themed joy now. The game rules comes in both English and Japanese and also has rules for a solitaire/co-op mode for one to two players.
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Zhou Huibin is a smith of words who majored in Philosophy & History from the University of Western Australia and whose life has followed the flow of his hobbies. He seeks continual contentment in his ponders, reading, writing, painting and board games which fills almost all of his time.
]]>Thus it was with great excitement that we have managed to acquire 5 compact yet interesting titles from a Japanese Publisher called Oink Games. The titles are Troll, insider, Deep Sea Adventure, The Pyramid's Deadline and Maskmen and all come with English rules inside the box.
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To give you a taste of what Oink Games is serving you game wise, we will be introducing 3 of their games to you here:
Deep Sea Adventure
The first is the very popular Deep Sea Adventure. In Deep Sea Adventure, you are all poor divers looking to get rich quick by claiming treasure from under the sea, yet you are all sharing only one supply of air and the goal is to be the richest diver who manages to get his treasure into the submarine alive.
Gameplay is really simple, in turn order players first choose if they are going up towards the submarine if they have at least one treasure or down into the sea as once you have chosen to go up, you can't go back down. The air supply is then reduced by the amount of treasures the current player is holding. Then two dice which only have faces from 1 to 3 are rolled. The total of the two dice dictates how far the player must move minus the amount of treasure one has. Now wherever you land you may pick up that treasure or if it is a blank spot you may even lighten your load by dropping a treasure.
The round ends when all the players have either reached the submarine or have drowned. Do this for 3 rounds and the player with the most points wins.
Insider
Insider is a game that asks the question, are we controlled by what we hear and what we see, are we able to decide freely? This is achieved in game by shuffling the role cards and dealing one to each person. One of these will be the master and the other will be the the insider. Now through a opening sequence, only the master and insider will be the only ones who know what the secret word is yet the master does not know who the insider is. Then with a timer count down, all the players are able to ask the master any questions that can be answered with a Yes, No or I don't know.
The goal of the game is for the correct word to be guessed, for if it is not, all the players lose but if the correct word is guessed, the timer is then used again for players to discuss who they think the insider is. If the insider is exposed, the rest of the players win, if not the insider wins.
The Pyramid's Deadline
In The Pyramid's Deadline you are all architects in ancient Egypt tasked with building the grandest Pyramid for Pharaoh but be careful as if you have not completed your pyramid when Pharaoh dies, then you will be executed.
Gameplay is simple. During your turn, you roll dice and in turn order each person picks a die which shows what kind of piece he may take then add it to their pyramid according to the game conditions. The game ends when all players have completed their pyramid or on each die is a square stone and if all the square stones on the table are taken, Pharaoh dies and all who have not completed their pyramid and the player that takes that last square stone loses. The winner is the player who has the highest scoring pyramid, counted by multiplying the length by the height then minus the amount in capstones on the pyramid.
As you can see Oink Games makes not only compact and interesting games but each game feels quite unique in their own way. To find out more on the other 2 titles or even to pick up the above games we have talked about, do pop by our HarbourFront outlet to enjoy some Japanese fun and fare!