I backed this almost on theme alone. I'm half-Japanese and the ideals behind kintsugi play heavily into my approach to life (along with other Japanese concepts wabi sabi and mono no aware). The card quality was disappointing to me, decent thickness, but poor feel/texture. Gameplay is satisfying for what it is, but I do think I like Sushi Go a little more. Happy to have it in my collection and to have supported the developer's Kickstarter (with slight bias as they are local to me in Minnesota; I love supporting local board game businesses). Glad you guys covered it. 💜
I played it earlier tonight and I will add that I found the player reference cards to be useless. The one thing we all agreed is that we wanted the scoring to be on a reference. We couldn't care less how many of each card is in the deck when we were constantly going back to the rules to look up the scoring. Since the sushi go comparison is inevitable, the cards have the scoring indicated on a corner of the card, but the iconography was iffy at best. Some cards just had * as if to say "I don't know man, look it up" whereas similar things are handled better in Sushi go. I'll give an example. The Tea Jars are similar to the Maki rolls in Sushi go. Most tea jars is 6 points, but the jars themselves don't score individually (+1 per jar if it's repaired though). That's printed on the jar as something like X=6 where X is the jar symbol. In sushi go that same concept is shown as "Most = 6". Much clearer. Also I found some of the scoring to be a bit more disappointing in terms of creativity like Zee was saying. Saucers either double or triple the value of the cup. Awesome. Other stuff is like "+1 if you fixed it" and that doesn't tie into the unique scoring of that item. That said it's still a decent game and I put my name in to possibly win it at the convention I'm attending, but if I don't win a copy I don't know if I'd go out of my way to buy it.
I would venture that outside of Sushi Go (/Party), what Zee might have had in mind are either more complex drafting games like '7 wonders duel' (where the idea of discarding for resource can be found), 'Citadels' or 'Evergreen', which I think he likes a lot if I remember correctly. Or 'mostly as simple games' like 'Fantasy Realms' maybe? 'Conspiracy: Abyss Universe' (which can evolve to drafting)? 'Canvas'? 'Cascadia'? 'Quadropolis'? maybe 'Planted'/'Treasure Hunter'/ 'Point Salad'? Don't really remember what Zee thinks of most of them, but they may be candidates...
I backed this almost on theme alone.
I'm half-Japanese and the ideals behind kintsugi play heavily into my approach to life (along with other Japanese concepts wabi sabi and mono no aware). The card quality was disappointing to me, decent thickness, but poor feel/texture. Gameplay is satisfying for what it is, but I do think I like Sushi Go a little more. Happy to have it in my collection and to have supported the developer's Kickstarter (with slight bias as they are local to me in Minnesota; I love supporting local board game businesses). Glad you guys covered it. 💜
I played it earlier tonight and I will add that I found the player reference cards to be useless. The one thing we all agreed is that we wanted the scoring to be on a reference. We couldn't care less how many of each card is in the deck when we were constantly going back to the rules to look up the scoring. Since the sushi go comparison is inevitable, the cards have the scoring indicated on a corner of the card, but the iconography was iffy at best. Some cards just had * as if to say "I don't know man, look it up" whereas similar things are handled better in Sushi go. I'll give an example. The Tea Jars are similar to the Maki rolls in Sushi go. Most tea jars is 6 points, but the jars themselves don't score individually (+1 per jar if it's repaired though). That's printed on the jar as something like X=6 where X is the jar symbol. In sushi go that same concept is shown as "Most = 6". Much clearer. Also I found some of the scoring to be a bit more disappointing in terms of creativity like Zee was saying. Saucers either double or triple the value of the cup. Awesome. Other stuff is like "+1 if you fixed it" and that doesn't tie into the unique scoring of that item. That said it's still a decent game and I put my name in to possibly win it at the convention I'm attending, but if I don't win a copy I don't know if I'd go out of my way to buy it.
I picked this up at a FLGS a couple months back. Looking forward to getting it to the table!
The last line made me laugh out loud :D
What are the better games?
I would venture that outside of Sushi Go (/Party), what Zee might have had in mind are either more complex drafting games like '7 wonders duel' (where the idea of discarding for resource can be found), 'Citadels' or 'Evergreen', which I think he likes a lot if I remember correctly.
Or 'mostly as simple games' like 'Fantasy Realms' maybe? 'Conspiracy: Abyss Universe' (which can evolve to drafting)? 'Canvas'? 'Cascadia'? 'Quadropolis'? maybe 'Planted'/'Treasure Hunter'/ 'Point Salad'? Don't really remember what Zee thinks of most of them, but they may be candidates...
Stupid theme, I have to say. :P