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Suganuma has designed other games as well, such as the clever real-time treasure-finding game Sukimono that I covered on BGG News in October 2013 and Diamonsters, which debuted from Japanese publisher Grounding in 2013 and which IDW Games and Pandasaurus Games have released in an English-language version in early 2015.
As with Machi Koro, IDW/Pandasaurus kept the Noboru Hotta art of the Japanese Diamonsters, retaining the friendly charm of the original game, which features friendly tussles among the five monsters in the game as to who will run off each round with the new monster that shows up to play. I'm not sure what the actual setting of the game might be, but that's what the setting has become in my mind since you're trying to collect three monsters of the same type or five diamonds across all of your collected monsters to win a round. After each round, everyone resets their hand to the original five monsters, then you go at it again. Win enough rounds, and you win the game.
Should you care to learn details of how to play Diamonsters, don't let the 23-minute count on the video below scare you off as I show all of the components and explain how to play in the first three minutes, then spend the next four minutes talking more about the game, how it differs from the Japanese version, and what it feels like to play. All the rest of the time is spent demonstrating how to chop that monstrous Diamonsters box down to a friendly made-in-Japan sized box that will easily fit on your game shelf. For those who want to skip the video, here's the summary shot:
Old size (left) vs. new size (right)
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