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Japanese Game Round-up: Testing the Limits of Game Design

Japanese Game Round-up: Testing the Limits of Game Design
From gallery of W Eric Martin

The second occurrence of "Is This a Game?" ("これはゲームなのか？") took place Dec. 7-15, 2019 in Tokyo. I wrote about the first such event in a Dec. 2018 post that featured the final published version of Stonehenge and the Sun, a design from Naotaka Shimamoto and itten that was shown during that event in an earlier form.

At this new event, 17 "experimental" game designers displayed more than twice as many works as at the first show in a space that was four times as large in order to allow visitors to have more access. Here's one user's post about the experience:



By clicking on the upper-left image, you can see progress in that block game in this tweet from someone four days after the one above:


Japanese game publisher ASOBI.dept plans to sell pins featuring the event's logo, and it's a nicely evocative pin whether you know anything about the event or not — which seems in the spirit of the event since these creations often seem like the rules are as much what you make of them as what the designer has given to you.


At the 2018 event, one of the designs featured was titled "一年生" ("One Year Game") from Nilgiri of doujin publisher するめデイズ (Surume Days), with Nilgiri being one of the organizers of this event. "One Year Game" featured a playing time of (as you might expect) one year ("一年"). Saigo — a JP-to-EN translator who often tweets about JP games in English — explains the game in some detail in this Twitter thread, but the general idea is that you would take one of the boxes, write actions on the three rule cards, close the box again, then take home another box that someone else had completed and over the next year, you would record on the rule cards when you took the actions listed on them. One year later, you would meet others who were playing the game, receive the box that you initially wrote rules for, then score points based on how many times that other player took the actions you had specified.

Nilgiri posted an overview of the one year party that took place in May 2019, which had nearly fifty people show up to talk about what they had done in the previous twelve months: "It was a mysterious experience to feel familiarity here even though it was the first meeting for us. Looking back now, I can't think of a similar experience."

The designer talks about how the rules presented to them influenced their actions, with a last-minute trip to a concert by Ringo Shiina to score 100 points for whoever had submitted that rule in their box: "But these are not my scores. The person who thought about the rule, only that person is in trouble if the action is not done. Still, I couldn't help it. There was a mysterious feeling like living with a stranger, an almost transparent person for a year."

From gallery of W Eric Martin
Components of one box of 一年生

Japanese publisher itten has tweeted pics and short summaries in English of several exhibits form the 2019 show, so let's look at those:




















Patrick Engro has expanded descriptions of some of these exhibits in an article on GameHungry.com.

Along these same lines, here's a few pics of 巨獣大進撃 ("Giant Beast Attack"), a design released at Tokyo Game Market in November 2019 by Joyple Games. Google Translate doesn't make everything clear about the gameplay, but the gist is that you use an actual atlas as the game board, with one or more players moving a monster across the surface of the world and everyone dividing up the area as the game progresses.


I want to see more creations along these lines, and since my efforts to learn Japanese have not gotten past the numbers, I need to make this event happen in English. Therefore, with permission from Nilgiri, I've already reserved space at BGG.CON 2020 to hold an "Is This a Game?" event in the U.S. Details to come, but if you have any interest in participating, this post will ideally prompt you toward a gamey new year's resolution...

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