Okko: Oni Hunters is live (Remember the Oni)
Okko: Oni Hunters has launched on Kickstarter, and the campaign will run for 20 days. You may back either just the base game or select the Samurai tier that includes the Oni Court expansion.
Our preview post below was published on May 17.
Okko: Oni Hunters is a 1-2 player cooperative card game set in the same universe as The Red Joker's previous game, Okko Chronicles. It will launch on Kickstarter on May 19.
In Okko: Oni Hunters, you play as a hunter who traverses the land of Pajan together with a team of allies, in search of three Oni. Every time you reach a new location on the map, you lose time for each of the actions you perform there. As soon as you get information about the hiding place of an Oni, you reveal one token from a grid of face-down tokens, to see if it is an Oni. If it is one indeed, you flip it face-down again, and try to memorize its place on the grid until the end of the game. Events may shift the position of these tokens, so remembering where the Oni are may prove to be a challenge and cause you to lose.
On each turn, you first draw a card from the Adventure deck. This gives you a resource that you may need to spend later. Then, you draw an enemy card, and place it on the table to form an enemy row. If 5 enemies pile up, you lose one time unit, and if there are 7 enemies in the row, you lose two time units.
During the action phase, you can perform one of five available actions: 1) draw two more Adventure cards, 2) play one special Adventure card, 3) fulfill the requirements of an encounter (by discarding items and/or allies from your hand), 4) travel on the map (by pressing your luck and drawing cards from a deck until or before you bust), 5) fight an enemy if you have the necessary resources. If you defeat 6 enemies, you get to peek at one grid token. The game takes place on three different maps, so you will repeat the same process three times in order to find all three Oni.
Yes, I can easily picture myself going through all three maps, reaching the end, and then flipping the wrong tile and losing just like that. It will feel frustrating and unfair. No, thanks.
The memory element indeed made it a hard pass for me. Why do you want to bother remembering which tile is which while carefully planning what you do throughout the rest of the game? I don't see how the two can combine well. If you get involved enough into the game, you forget when the Oni is, so the game incentivizes you not to get too invested in how you play it. I may be extrapolating, but that's how I feel it.
And three oni? Rinse and repeat the same time three times? Clearly not for me.
I'm glad to see others enjoy the game though. The more diverse the world of board gaming is, the happier I am.
You're welcome! I would back this one too because I love the artwork, but I strongly dislike the memory element.
I love Okko comics by Hub & Okko Chronicles so I'll get this one too. Thanks for the suggestion (: