• Designer Kentaro Yazawa of Hoy Games was inspired by his love of Bohnanza to produce his own games, and following the releases of Tanemaki (2013) and MAMEY (2018), Yazawa added a third bean-related game to his catalog in 2021 with the release of Gone with the Beans (豆と共にあれ) — which was supposedly influenced by Terra Mystica.
An overview:
Here's how to play:
The game contains 38 tiles: 36 numbered tiles with one 1, two 2s, etc. up to eight 8s, along with a tiger and a dragon. Shuffle the tiles face down, then each player takes tiles based on the player count, with the round's starting player taking one additional tile. With four players, for example, the starting player draw ten tiles and all other players nine. At least one tile will remain out of play.
The start player attacks by playing a tile from their hand. The next player can either pass or defend the attack by playing the same tile. Note that the dragon defends against any odd-numbered tile and the tiger against any even-numbered tile. After defending, place a tile of your own to attack. If a player passes, the next player either passes or defends. If all other players pass on your attack, place a tile from your hand face down, then choose a new tile to attack again. If you attack with the dragon or tiger, a player can defend with any odd- or even-numbered tile, respectively.
The first player to empty their hand wins the round and scores points based on the last tile that they played and the specific scoring card for that round. They score 1 bonus point for each time an attack of theirs went undefended. At the end of a round, if a player has scored 10+ points, they win.
Tiger & Dragon can be played with team rules like GOITA. Teammates sit across from one another, and the first team to collectively score 15+ points wins.
Here's a summary of the gameplay from JP game fan James Nathan:
The economy is relatively closed with winning bids going to the auctioneer, and the auctioneer's bids going to the bank; however, if any player bids an amount shown on the card up for auction, that card receives a coin from the bank, covering that number.
When the game ends, players earn points for their completed cards, purple cards with special scoring criteria, star symbols on cards, and a bit for leftover money. Of note, players without at least one star symbol are eliminated. Otherwise, the player with the most points wins.
After you tell everyone the story of how you used various tools to ward off the threat, everyone votes on whether or not you succeeded. If a majority backs you, you keep the threat card; otherwise, you don't. Each player secretly belongs to either the Secret Society or the Cult, and you naturally want to vote for the players on your team, but no one knows who is on which team.
After a certain number of threats, the game ends, players reveal which group they belong to, and each group tallies the number of threats that their members escaped. Whichever side avoided more threats wins!
The game system provides a solid shell that can be covered with characters, situations, and items of all types, and multiple editions of the game have been released, such as Cat & Chocolate: Business Is Business in which the stories all take place in the corporate world; Cat & Chocolate: Blooming Days, with stories set in Japanese schools; Cat & Chocolate: Nichijou Arc, which has everyday situations such as encountering a long line for the bathroom; and...Texas Zombies, which was a version created for release in the U.S. because apparently that's what life is like here.
Anyway, I've now run across a different Japanese publisher, SlowCurve, that's released three licensed versions of the game: キャット&チョコレート: Gachapin x Mukku, based on characters in children's television shows; Yuru Camp x Cat & Chocolate in 2020, based on the Yuru Camp (or "Laid-Back Camp") anime; and Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion x Cat & Chocolate in 2021, based on one of many Code Geass anime.
Is it important that you know about these hard-to-find, Japanese-only versions of a game you might not have known about in the first place? Probably not, but I like highlighting how a game design can have a long, yet invisible life, with the creators ideally continuing to be supported for their work as it spreads to new audiences.