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When it comes to Game Market, though, I follow the work of a couple of dozen designer/publishers, but the total number of independent designer/publishers at TGM keeps increasing, with many of these people producing multiple games for every single show. For May 2016, the TGM Preview I created listed only 38 games, barely 15% of the 251 new games available at the show from the 480 exhibitors(!) on hand. (I listed a larger percentage of games in my two previous TGM previews, but I had less time to prepare for this show due to GTS. Sorry! Numbers courtesy a TGM summary on Table Games in the World.)
Thus, once I arrived at TGM, I felt like I was exploring a mysterious wonderland of colorful goods, most of which had rules only in Japanese, which meant that I was left to puzzle out what the games might involve based on all of the other games that I've seen over the years: This one is probably a word-based party game (and it was); that one looks like a connect-the-opposite-sides-of-the-board abstract strategy game (which it was, although I missed learning the details that distinguished it from all the others); there's a Werewolf-style, hidden-role game, and there's another one and there's still another one; here's a card-based, music-themed set-collecting game of some sort in which you try to anticipate what others will do so that you can mooch off them.
In short, for those who haven't done their homework — by which I mean studying the Game Market website in detail for weeks beforehand as designers blog about their creations — TGM is a real-time, meta-deduction game, with you trying to deduce what the games might actually be and whether they're to your taste before they're sold out and disappear from the market, possibly forever.
That said, a larger number of non-JP publishers was on hand at TGM in May 2016, including first-timers Crash Games and Zoch Verlag. Alderac Entertainment Group even had its own booth at the show, and given the sellthrough rate of what AEG brought, I'm sure that other publishers will bring their own selection of tiny games to TGM in the future.
My wife, son and I shot more than four hundred images during TGM, and we recorded more than a dozen game overview videos a couple of days after the show since it's not easy to find designers during the show who are (1) willing to demo their games on camera and (2) able to speak English. I'll start with a dozen pics in this report and follow with more over the next few days, ideally wrapping up everything before BGG.CON Spring starts on Friday, May 27. Deadlines — I need 'em!
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Each time I attend Tokyo Game Market, it's held in a different, larger part of Tokyo Big Sight, which is the largest convention venue in Japan. What's more, at least three other events were taking place in Big Sight as well, probably more.
This shot shows those waiting at the front of the line at 9:58 a.m., a couple of minutes before the show opened. They had arrived at 1:00 a.m. to reserve their spot and had been waiting ever since. TGIW notes that 2,400 people were in line when TGM opened, and approximately 11,000 people participated over the entire day — which is kind of amazing given that Origins Game Fair lasts five days and in 2015 it had ~16,000 attendees, a mere 50% more than TGM.
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One of the faces at TGM that would be most recognizable by gamers belongs to Hisashi Hayashi, who was selling the worker-placement word game Word Porters and the heavy strategy game YOKOHAMA — and by "heavy" I mean "weighty". While a large percentage of titles at TGM are tiny card games designed not to take up too much space in tiny Japanese apartments, Hayashi has gone big with his 2015 release Minerva and now YOKOHAMA, which Tasty Minstrel Games has already announced that it will release in a deluxe edition similar to what it did for Orléans. This is one of many games that I plan to bring to BGG.CON Spring so that I can get a couple of plays under my belt. Not much time to prepare...
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One thing that you can be assured of seeing at TGM are cute cats, whether on the games themselves or on accessories such as these acrylic dice towers sold by the Fuji Game Factory for approx. $27.
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Designers Corentin Lebrat and Antoine Bauza were smitten by the self-publication efforts that many designers make for TGM, so they produced five hundred copies of the real-time slapping game Gaijin Dash!! for May 2016 and included rules only in Japanese to frustrate any non-JP fans who managed to get their hands on a copy. Thankfully, I had a translator who helped me record an overview video later, so now I'm all set with the rules and soon you will be, too.
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I encountered many games like this at TGM, word games or party games or conversation games of some sort that reduced me to taking a photograph and moving on. For the record, this title by アナログゲーム倶楽部 (Analog Game Club) is titled 対決！空論バトル, which translates to something like "Showdown! Doctrinaire Battle". My loss for not knowing Japanese and getting more out of this...
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Here's what fits in a typical booth at TGM: a dozen copies of three games, a small display of how to play one of the games, and a sampling of meeple-bearing accessories. BGG owner Scott Alden had asked me to pick up Peke's Mushroom Mania for him, so I did. I then recorded an overview video later so that he'd be able to play it, and in the process I discovered that the translated name is nothing like Mushroom Mania, which is the title that had been submitted with the listing.
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Here's a closer shot of the meeple accessories at this booth. Think those bolo ties should find their way to the Geek Store? I don't know whether the crossover between bolo tie-wearers and gamers is an empty set, but I can't imagine the number being too large. Am I wrong?
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LOGS from 彩彩工房 (Sai2Workshop) is the "connect-the-opposite-sides-of-the-board abstract strategy game" that I mentioned above, and the publisher brought a grand total of twenty copies of this item — which features rules for two games, neither of which I know — to TGM. I look at these types of game listings on the TGM website and think that I should investigate this title more so that it can be included in the BGG database, then I realize that I just don't have time and move on. Sorry, LOGS; maybe I'll catch you next time!
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Another aspect of TGM is you thinking that you want to get a game, saying you'll get back to the booth later, then either forgetting that you wanted to get the game or discovering that all of the copies have sold out. That was the case with this booth from Ayatsurare Ningyoukan as my trick-taking-loving self had noted at least a year ago that I wanted to get Tricks & Deserts, but I didn't recognize the orange box when I snapped this pic — only the next day when I started reviewing and tweeting the images. Oops.
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As I mentioned before, many TGM titles are tiny card games, and as a result much of the gameplay takes place not with the components themselves, but between the players, with the components merely being prods that spur players to action. With that thought in mind, perhaps it's not surprising the Werewolf-style, hidden role games are so popular at TGM. I can't tell at first glance whether Wolf in the Village from Kanzaki Hisahito and Dirty Labor offers any new spins on the genre, but it features graphics that top all of the other versions I've seen, so that's one big plus.
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While most of the booths at TGM are tiny, the perimeter of the convention space houses larger stands by more established publishers, who naturally pay more to occupy that square footage. Oink Games is one such publisher, and it has a crowd of assistants on hand to both set up prior to TGM opening and...
...sell games to visitors once things start hopping. Oink has a beautiful consistency to its offerings, with every game of the past few years coming in a box with the same footprint and bearing the same (discounted) convention price of ¥2,000 (~$18). You know you're getting a clever little game with sharp, minimalist graphics, so you step up, hand over your bills, and take a little blue bag home with you.
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