Once all players have chosen their cards, players reveal their two selected facedown cards and decide what to do with each: use them or discard them. Players can choose to use both cards, discard both, or use one card and discard the other. Whilst we do have some big publishers like Oink games that produced the astonishingly good ‘ Deep Sea Adventure‘, the majority of games seem to stay local and off the international radar. These actions include laying down new garden plots, drawing objective cards, building new irrigation channels, and of course moving the characters. There’s also a separate die that controls the weather on each turn, also affecting what you can and cant do during your action stage.

Lydia: What a wild story. It seems so cruel that the upstanding members of our village have to deal with all of the craziness these days. Did you hear Larry was hospitalized after he was bitten by a wolf trying to save Gwen’s friend, Jenny?Lydia: I hadn’t heard! Well, have you heard from Kay recently? Apparently she saw a creature in the lagoon last Saturday.

Interviews - Get the inside scoop straight from game designers and publishers, and meet the teams behind everything going on at Zatu. Players must travel through the famous ‘Tokaido Road’ whilst immersing themselves in Japanese culture. Players then receive a new hand of ten cards to start round 2, once again choosing two cards and passing the rest, but now to the right. Players continue building on the rows that they already have, scoring 3 points for each blue card and 4 points for each green card at the end of round two.Either way, it’s a treat for any Japan loving board game enthusiasts like me! (And you, I hope!) How popular are board games in Japan? For the player interaction section of the Ohanami review, we award a another solid 7 out of 10. Denying your opponent those big scoring cards while also not worrying about passing the gold your opponent can’t use always need to be in the decision making process for each choice you make, but that is it. For the most part you are in your own world. It is a drafting game, so it is certainly there. The most control you have is in the flow of cards to your opponent, but as far as an option in the field, there is nothing too extraordinary. I keep my old scoresheets in the box, and I usually just hand each player an older sheet so that they can use it as a reminder of the point scale for the pink cards – and also to get a gauge for how scoring went for people in a previous game. I will also note that there is a player aid on the edge on the box bottom – so if you leave the lid off, players can use that as well to see the needed info.

At the end of round 2, players score 3 points for each blue card and 4 points for each green card (with the grass motif) in all of their gardens. At the end of round 2, this player would score 21 points for their blue cards (7 cards x 3 points) and 32 points for their green ones (8×4).

Well from what I can gather, most of the games coming out of Japan are either relatively small scope and indie, or extremely experimental, even for the gaming community. Players are only allowed to have three gardens at a time, so only three columns of cards. Players may use both cards, use only one, or discard both into the discard pile in the middle of the group.