Tokyo Game Market 2021 Autumn: Report from Table Games in the World

Editor's note: Game Market took place in Tokyo on November 20-21, 2021, and Saigo — who translates game rules between Japanese and English and who tweets about new JP games — has translated reports about this event (day one and day two) that were written by Takuya Ono, who runs the Table Games in the World blog. Mr. Ono has given permission to reprint the photos from his post. Many thanks to Saigo! —WEM

On a fairly warm autumnal day for late November with the temperature reaching as high as 19º Celsius, Tokyo Game Market 2021 Autumn took place at Tokyo Big Sight West Exhibition Halls 1 and 2.

Previously, Game Market 2021 Spring was held when the COVID-19 pre-emergency measures issued by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government were in force, resulting in limited attendance of 12,500 in two days. However, due to the drastic drop in COVID-19 in Japan cases since September, the government has lifted its emergency measure restricting the attendance to events. The 1,500 early entry tickets for the show sold out and the Game Market catalog supplied with an admission ticket also sold well. I wonder if the announced target audience of 20,000 over two days will be reached.

This photo shows the waiting line of 1500 people who had managed to buy early entry tickets. They started lining up at around 7:00 a.m. for the few and limited sales, and waited for the doors to open at 11:00 a.m.

Early entry tickets are sold for many events to avoid crowding during the COVID-19 crisis. It was first introduced to Game Market at Tokyo Game Market 2021 Spring. By limiting the early entrance, Game Market Management Office hopes to have the visitors enjoy the show at ease without lining up so early in the morning.

Finally, the doors opened at 11:00. With the customary announcement and applause, the enthusiasts who had been waiting for this moment dispersed into the venue. By the way, there were about five groups with children among these 1,500 people. Even after that, I saw some couples, but hardly any visitors with children.

It took 25 minutes for the 1,500 people to get in because they had to enter in a line with ample space between each of them. General admission (of about 300 people at 12:00) also started at 12:00, so the early entrants who were last in line only had an advantage of approximately 30 minutes.

By the way, the opening time had been moved one hour later to 11:00 for the latest Game Market in order to provide time for setting up block booths. Although it is possible to enter the venue for preparation from midnight on the day of the event, the organizer had announced to move the opening time one hour later because some people had difficulties in preparation even with ten hours. At SPIEL, the venue setup starts two days before the event, but doing that at Game Market will raise its exhibit fees even higher.

On the other hand, the closing time is still 5:00 p.m., in consideration of the exhibitors from rural areas. It results in a shorter time for visitors, who are thus forced to rush to look around the large venue.

Block booths in West Hall 1: Oink Games, GP Games

Block booths in West Hall 2: Engames×Korokorodou, Sugorokuya

Although it does not look very crowded in this photo, people were queuing all over the venue. GP Games had a "1,000-yen lottery wheel" in which you might win CATAN: 3D Edition as the special prize. With even the lowest prize being a game worth 2,000 yen, the lottery was so popular that it finished quickly before noon despite limiting the challenges to two challenges per person.

GP Games' 1,000-yen lottery wheel

Gamestore Banesto brought new games from SPIEL '21 in October, including Boonlake and Free Ride. Only fifty or so copies of each title were available. These games were also very popular, and the line of people queuing to buy them extended almost to the wall. The game recommended by Banesto was a Taiwanese trick-taking game
Macaron, which can also be played solo.

Mr. Nakano of Gamestore Banesto managed to bring new titles from SPIEL in time

Meanwhile, instead of the block booth area with wide aisles, there was more congestion at the standard booth area. The crowds in front of the booths obstructed the views of items on display, and it was hard even to get through them. With bags full of games bumping one another and the smell of sweat, it felt as if the Game Market of pre-COVID-19 days was back.

Good old crowding at standard booths

Hot topics at the venue also included the release of the Japanese editions of Factoria and Fast Sloths by Sunnybird, a board game café from Nagasaki Prefecture. The games made it to the Game Market in time prior to the general release in early December 2021.

Taira, the café manager of Sunnybird, is also known for his board game podcast "Oshaberi Sunnybird"

One of the new efforts at the latest Game Market was the buying of used board games at the venue by the Book-Off chain of second-hand stores. They had announced a list of 1,500 titles that they would buy and bought them on the spot based on the inspected conditions. I heard that approximately 150 people had made an advanced booking to sell their used games there. Book-Off hopes to spread board games to their chain of stores throughout Japan in order to support the distribution of board games alongside that of new book titles.

Used board games purchased by the well-known chain Book-Off

A group of nine companies set up a joint block booth specializing in murder mystery and sold a total of 70 titles, including consigned games. Along with other doujin (indie) works, it is estimated that more than 100 murder mystery titles were released at the latest Game Market.

Mr. Kawaguchi of DEAR SPIELE hosting the murder mystery booth

BakaFire Party had an old European-style room in their booth to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the release of Tragedy Looper. They have released a new expansion set.

Celebrating the tenth anniversary of Tragedy Looper in an old European-style room

At standard booths, game designers described and sold their games directly. It was nice to hear detailed descriptions of the games as the demo tables to try them out were missing at the standard booths in the current situation.

Asozan-Daifunka with his debut game Box no Kanji

Toryo Hojo once again released a game themed on a recent scandal in time

Seiji Kanai released a new title in collaboration with Manifest Destiny

OKAZU Brand's Hisashi Hayashi released a reprint of Yokohama with some tweaks

•••

This is my report on the second day of Game Market 2021 Autumn, which took place at Tokyo Big Sight on November 20 and 21. Since Tokyo Game Market had been changed to a two-day event, it has struggled with attendance on the second day, but the attendance on the second day at the latest Game Market seems to have sufficiently recovered along with that on Saturday. According to the announcement by Game Market Management Office, the attendance was 10,000 on the first day and 8,000 on the second day, adding up to 18,000.

Without any early entry tickets for the second day, there was a line of approximately 1,000 people waiting before the opening. On the previous day, the formalities to let the visitors into the venue took a long time at the entrance of Big Sight, resulting in the waiting line stretching all the way to Rinkai Line's International Exhibition Center Station, but the entry was handled smoothly today. The waiting line to enter the Game Market venue was changed from previous day's one line to four lines, and this helped letting the visitors in much faster.

Waiting line at the opening time on the second day

Although standard booths were relatively fewer on the second day, many exhibitors had their stock kept for the second day, and the venue was crowded like that on the first day. As for the block booths, while it had been quite deserted at TGM 2020 Autumn last year as if the size of the area was a disadvantage, there were many people everywhere in the halls this year.

At many booths, copies of their games were in short supply from the start on the second day, and even the ones that had been kept for the second-day visitors were sold out soon. I heard many people say that the items they had planned to buy were sold out. The games that sold out at the venue included not only the doujin indie games that were available only at Game Market, but also the games available for general distribution, such as those sold by Sugorokuya, engames and Sunnybird. It has been two years since Tokyo Game Market 2019 Autumn, which was the last Game Market in the pre-COVID-19 days, and it felt as if the visitors were going on a shopping spree after undergoing the frustration of not being able to play or buy games so freely.

This frustration may also apply to the game creators. They used to have occasions to release their games two or three times a year on a regular basis, but due to cancellations and downsizing of Game Market and other such game shows, they had lost such occasions. This led to longer production periods, which I think have resulted in many high-quality games in both mechanisms and artwork. It felt as if the pent-up passions of both the creators and visitors have exploded in this occasion.

HOY Games' Gone with the Beans, the most anticipated game in our questionnaire survey on newly-released games at Tokyo Game Market, was in short supply all the time

4tousei's Stampede, another anticipated game, was not available for advance booking, and it is not scheduled to be reprinted

Five titles in slim boxes were released from itten as the "Fanbrick Series"

Bushiroad's board game brand Teriyaki Games released two titles following Tsukkomi Karuta

Yofukashi Project is an IP board game brand formed by Konami and others

Asobition had pre-sales of the Japanese edition of an overseas game, a remake of a Japanese game, and an overseas remake of a Japanese game

Sugorokuya had a display to propose how to introduce a board game section in general stores

The Game Market exhibit fees were raised due to a sharp decline in visitors during the COVID-19 crisis. The exhibit fees for TGM 2020 Autumn were ¥17,600 per day for a standard booth and ¥161,700 for two days for a block booth, but the fees for the latest Game Market were raised by nearly 30%, to ¥22,000 per day for a standard booth and ¥220,000 for two days for a block booth. Due to this, some organizations that used to exhibit in block booths downgraded to standard booths. At standard booths, there are not any demo tables to try out the games, and there may not be enough space to display the components. Buying games without seeing the components and by only hearing verbal descriptions requires a lot of preliminary research.

In addition to the official Game Market website, Twitter is very helpful for my preliminary research. Game creators introduce their games with photos of components in advance, and enthusiasts spread the information on the games, which look interesting. Those who visit Game Market gather such information and form their plan to buy whatever within their budget. This has been happening for a quite a while, but it seems to have grown more active since the cancellation of Game Market last year.

At the latest Game Market, I noticed three trends, namely "two-player", "pen-and-paper", and "trick-taking" games. While I can presume that the spread of two-player and pen-and-paper games are due to the demand for playing games even during the COVID-19 crisis, I am not sure why so many trick-taking games are being released. I wonder if the popularity of trick-taking games in Japan has increased to the level of that in Germany. I would like to write about such games in a later article.

Domina Games' Lemures is a board game for 1-2 players

On my way home, I stopped by the food court in front of the venue and saw groups of people playing at some tables the board games they had just bought. It seems to have been a day for many people to spend plenty of time to enjoy board games. The upcoming Game Markets will be held on February 6 (Sun) at Intex Osaka and on April 23 (Sat) and 24 (Sun) at Tokyo Big Sight. I hope that the infection rate will stay low to enjoy these upcoming shows as well.

Ref: Tokyo Game Market 2021 Autumn reports from other Japanese websites you may
want to read:

• https://www.4gamer.net/games/999/G999905/20211123001/
• https://www.4gamer.net/games/999/G999905/20211126085/
• https://www.famitsu.com/news/202111/24241917.html
• https://xbusiness.jp/post/364
• https://kai-you.net/article/82112
• https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iLEjsVm7ibM
• http://horabodo.seesaa.net/article/484559686.html

•••

Report on New Games
(posted on Nov. 18, 2021 on TGiW)

Approximately 500 new titles are estimated to have been released at Tokyo Game Market 2021 Autumn. Let me introduce some of them by genre. While the games released in a small number of copies are already hard to acquire, some are still available online, so try searching for the ones that catch your attention.

Trick-Taking Games

Trick-taking games have long been popular at Game Market. In our questionnaire survey on newly-released games at Osaka Game Market 2021 and Tokyo Game Market 2021 Spring, trick-taking game titles, such as Luz, Trick Quest, and Hii Fuu!! were ranked high. The number of new trick-taking game titles exceeds even that from SPIEL. Card games can be produced with relatively less cost, and there is at least the fun of trick-taking itself. This may be why they are picked by many people. With many Japanese editions of overseas titles also being released, it seems that there is still rich source of ideas in this genre.

• HAMELN CAVE (YUTRIO)

In this two-player co-operative trick-taking game, the players try to escape from a cave by controlling the ship that moves toward the winner of each trick. Without consulting each other, you need to follow suit to meet the other player's intention, which you try to guess by the cards they play. In addition to moving the ship, you also need to get rid of the ghosts that have entered the deck.

• Backhander (Hugame)

In this trick-taking game, the suits to follow are revealed in line as the "suit lane" in advance. It is also possible to play cards from the tricks you have won to change the suit lane. The second-place player wins at the end, so you need to adjust the number of tricks to win by changing the lane.

• Lambdice / ΛICE (Asobi Dust)

In this trick-taking game, you can change the suit of your card by placing a die on it. In such a case, the rank of the card is determined by the dice roll, so you may win (or lose) unexpectedly.

• Interspace Conference on Earth (Suteki na Yama)

In this trick-taking game, special abilities are activated depending on the tricks you win. Points are scored in sets, but you lose points for having too many cards of the same suit.

• ULTIA (Xuhs Scobog)

In this three-player trick-taking game, each player first looks at the cards dealt to them and announces the hand they aim to form as their victory condition. The player who sets the highest condition wins the right to meet that condition, and the other two players try to stop that player. There is even a certain difficult hand with which you can immediately win the game if you manage to form it.

Pen-and-Paper Games

Pen-and-paper games that can be played by any number of people remain popular during the COVID-19 crisis. In addition to roll-and-write and flip-and-write games, many new mechanisms have been developed both in and out of Japan.

• Gone with the Beans (Hoy Games)

This flip-and-write game follows the style of Terra Mystica. Resources created from the facilities on flipped cards are used to build and develop new facilities. The ruler travels from country to country. The cost to build the facilities is less when the ruler is in or near your province, so it is important to patiently prepare for that. It feels great when you manage to prepare the resources just in time. The game contains four different game sheets, each with a different set-up.

• Era of Voyage: In Search of the Golden Country (A.I.Lab.遊)

Players create sea routes by putting stickers according to the routes indicated on the flipped cards and try to gain resources and points with a single-stroke move. It is also possible to make changes by putting stickers on top of one another. I was told that there is an advantage of using stickers over tile placement because you can keep track of each game this way.

• Hexa Ruins (Melobodo)

Using the resources gained from roll-and-write, the players head for the ruins. You may stop along the way depending on the resources. What is indicated by the dice roll changes depending on the date and time.

• Animism (Fudacoma Games)

Each player simultaneously fills in a space on the sheet they receive, then passes it to the next player in order to connect routes to gain resources and points. At the end of the game, add up the points gained from your routes filled on each sheet. Using the polyominoes purchased with resources, fill in the sheets with your color. Dice rolls are used only for special actions.

Two-Player Games

Two-player games also remain popular during the COVID-19 crisis. They can be played casually with close friends or family members when many people cannot gather. Although this genre has been largely dominated by abstract games, many new titles incorporate various elements such as luck and dexterity so as to appeal to a wide range of players.

• VICKE (Peanuts Design)

The players each explore their opponent's islands with their ship and race to find the two treasure islands (concealed from them). By placing sea route tokens, you can increase your movement speed and block your opponent's ship.

• Savannah Rush (Iopy Games)

Players use their animal tokens for area majority and combo bonuses. The difference in the value, number of tokens and special abilities between each animal and the rules that allow you to also place your opponent's tokens make the game highly strategic.

• You Be Aim (Protocraft)

In this two-player flick-and-move game, players flick shots from a special launcher to defeat enemies and advance. You can play a different game on each side of the double-sided game board.

• Bossa (Bossa)

This is a two-player game to place tiles on both sides of each of two dice, one with black dots and one with white dots, in ascending order with a difference of one. The first player to place and use up all the tiles in their hand wins.

• Kansenshou: Yonshu Kongou ("Lord of Infection: Mix-and-Match") (N&I Research Creation)

Four viruses fight as humans to infect, spread, and damage each other.

• LINKCARNATION (piyopiyo-gaming)

Players compete for points by placing cards in links in ways to cancel or strengthen each other's effects. There are decks of five tribes. Each player chooses two tribes for a two-player game and one tribe for a three-player game.

Communication Games

Although struggling with the COVID-19 crisis, multi-player communication games are still prominent at Game Market. Some of them come with rules to play the game online across long distances.

• Ojisan Message (Doya Games)

Players compete to combine cards to create an old man's unintentionally improper online message in order to get blocked at once. It is more of a dirty joke game than I thought.

• Silhuettia (JOLDEENO)

Players put transparent cards on top of each other to indicate the topic to guess. With an element of set collection, you may sometimes need to try a difficult topic

• The Defeat of Medusa (Zoemooi)

As the people who were turned to stone by Medusa, players each strike a pose to depict the answer, which is Medusa's weakness, to the hero. Meanwhile, the Medusa player tries to guess the answer or who the hero is hiding among the people frozen as statues. It is fun to have the players hold the pose.

• Warattewa Ikenai Ondoku ("Read Aloud without Laughing") (Non Product Production)

Players read aloud in turns, in units of paragraphs, the story of a famous Japanese folklore Momotaro, The Peach Boy. Each paragraph is read according to the style stated on the order card drawn from the deck. If anyone laughs while reading or listening, that player receives a chalk token as a penalty. Just reading some order cards made me chuckle.

• A Momentary Masterpiece or an Unconscious Awakening (Eokaku)

The painter draws the painting within ten seconds using only the shapes indicated on the flipped style card, then presents it so that other players can guess their chosen motif. The paintings inevitably tend to be abstract due to the shape and time limitations. The painter gains fewer points if everyone correctly guess the motif, so it's better to be vague to some extent.

• Navi-Rabbi (Rock and Games)

This is a 2-vs-2 team game in which a player in each team collects the item ordered by their Commander to escape from the moon. You do not know who your Commander is at first, but you can guess who it is from the orders given after each of your moves, such as orders that keep leading you to the same direction.

• Bistro Flip (Banana Moon)

The Chef players combine their chosen ingredients and Chef's Style, present them to tell how they would deliciously meet the Diner player's request, then flip the dish card to see what they have made. The final step to flip the dish card leads all the effort to recklessly topsy-turvy gourmet dishes.

• Word Radar Tantango (Kakugari Books)

This is a co-operative game to indicate the answer with two co-ordinate axes. The keywords written by the players are used as references on vertical and horizontal axes. Then each player places a co-ordinate token where they think most matches the answer. It is a good idea to have both flexible and specific keywords available.

• BL Made by Everyone: The Reaction (Bodoman)

The players each combine the face cards in their hand, devise and say a line to match the given situation, and vote for the best player.

• Banjo na Kanjo ("Banjo Emotion") (SUNABA.inc)

After shuffle-playing banjo music, each player plays a facial expression card which they think most fits the mood of the banjo music, then vote in the Dixit style for the card which they guess was played by the leader. The facial expression cards have a banjo player's photos on them.

• WOLFUME (aaa Games)

In this social deduction game with nine types of aroma available, players try to identify a person who has received a different aroma from the rest. If you sense that your aroma differs, conceal it by playing along with other players' comments.

Gamers' Games

While most of the indie doujin games at Game Market have a playing time of 15 minutes or so, there are some gamers' games that can take as long as 90 minutes. They are sold at higher prices with many components, but some game creators have gained trust by releasing such games on a regular basis.

• Orchard Plan (luck movies)

Players each grow and harvest fruits on their player board by placing workers in the central 20-square action space, then sell the fruits through set collection. The players who take weaker action spaces move up in turn order instead.

• ACADEMIC SOCIETY (analog lunchbox)

Players compete to earn prestige as scholars through worker placement and use their accomplished studies for engine building. You can increase the number of your workers by making the scholars regular employees, but this on the other hand reduces their prestige.

• EETenki: The Queen Himiko Chronicles (Accent Circonflexe)

Players predict the weather that will be revealed next, grow rice crops into jade beads, and ship them to China and get items. There are four types of weather, namely sunny, rainy, cloudy, and thunder. You can also perform card counting as well as an action to take a sneak peek at an upcoming face-down weather card.

Racing Games

Roll-and-move games form the basics of board gaming, but mere roll-and-move games would fail to attract attention. In addition to dice rolling, many games also incorporate card plays and action points as the ways to advance player pieces along with a wide variety of ideas on themes.

• Demolition Racing 2055 (BrainBrainGames)

In this racing game, which partly follows the style of a traditional Japanese gambling game Tehonbiki, players take turns to choose how many squares to move. If you step on the bomb trap set up by the dealer, you cannot advance and you take damage instead. The dealer must take the last remaining choice, so they may end up exploding by the bomb trap they have set up. Strategic materials vary between each course and machine, facilitating a tactical gameplay to outwit your opponents. If a player takes damage and their HP drops to 0, they are eliminated from the race.

• Arukuma (ASJ)

In this one-against-many game, people try to escape from a forest where a bear chases them. The people lose if any one of them is caught by the bear. Barricades are built to block the paths. The turn order for the bear and people is determined by a coin toss.

• Obon Derby (Azb.Studio)

This is a racing game to create Shouryouma and advance with card effects. Shouryouma are "spirit horses" made of cucumber and eggplant with chopsticks or skewer legs during the traditional Japanese Bon Festival holidays. You can create and enjoy funny horse figures and names, like in SocraTesla and Shark-mageddon, the games created by the same author.

• HAKONE (Paix GUILD)

Players draft runners in this game themed on Hakone Ekiden inter-college long-distance relay road race. Each college team has its characteristics. Moves are made in the Royal Turf style with different corrections applied in each section.

• Norun (Norun)

Players advance their pieces through simultaneous blind bidding, and the player who manages to go out at the closest spot from the black hole, which approaches them from the other end, wins. In the style following Mahe, if one piece lands on another, the bottom piece carries the top one when it next moves, making the moves quite unpredictable.

Auction Games & Drafting Games

While auctions are not used as often as before for distributing resources, they remain popular as means for facilitating tactical gameplays to outwit opponents. Drafting is also a popular alternative to auctions.

• Stampede (4tousei)

Players each hold as many dice as they like and roll them all at once. Each player's total dice rolls (pips) indicate the amount to pay. The highest bidder wins the item but the price paid is the second-highest bid, in the style of a Vickrey auction, and this induces inflation.

• Suroboruos (Kentaiki)

In this auction game, the items you bid on will be worth points only if you bid the amounts shown on these items and place chips to complete them in subsequent bids. You can earn the chips to use as your funds by having your items sold at auctions or by completing cards.

• The Wicked Labyrinth (TACTICAL GAMES)

In this set-collection game, players reveal the items in their hands in simultaneous blind bidding to win and collect "soul fragments" and upgrade them for scoring points. You can also reveal "the witch's sign" to have the winner of the bid lose points. You need to carefully allocate your limited items over the five bids because the items will not return to your hand, even if you lose each bid.

• Natsu Matsuri ("Nostalgic Festival") (Element Creators)

Players reveal the items in their hands in simultaneous blind bidding to win and collect Fond Memory and Satisfaction points in four sections. While collecting points in each section normally helps to gain points, the points gained from Firework may become less, even if you collect more.

• Koumon de Kataru Jinsei ("Life Told through the Anus") (Toydrop)

Players each play a combination of two number cards to bid on an "offering". The combined numbers are written on a whiteboard, and the player with the highest number in total at the end is eliminated. Note that any anus does not appear in the game, though "Koumon-sama" (Mr. Anus), who resembles the Japanese comedian "HG", does.

• Mask Village Poker (COLON ARC)

The players each receive one card at a time and draft it (take it or pass it to the neighboring player) to form their "village" hand to compete and score points.

• Doraneko ("Alley Cats") (Mirror House)

Players line up the cards in their decks in real time to create routes in order to get items and score points. The cards are added by drafting for deck building.

• Guild Build (Hakuroku)

Players hire adventurers through action drafting and score points by defeating enemies and through set collection. The adventurers are all bird characters.

Gambling Games

These gambling games are also arranged in a variety of ways to facilitate tactical gameplay and strategic thinking.

• Patron Hold'em (KogeKogeDo)

Players each receive two adventurer cards. After checking their abilities, players bet on whether their adventurers can accomplish each quest. The player whose adventurers have accomplished the most receives the money (pot) contributed by all the players. Adventurers' abilities may be increased by item cards, so it might be worth making a bet on them even if they cannot accomplish the quest with their current abilities.

• Aruchin (Aruchin)

Players roll dice in a rice bowl to form a hand. There are six special cards to change the dice rolls or snatch them from other players.

• Infinity Casino (Genge Games)

The players each write any amount on their chips and place bets. If you correctly bet on the outcome of the dice roll, you win the payout based on the amount. The highest and lowest bets are cancelled, but there are no limits otherwise, so it is not unusual to bet billions and trillions. The score table lists the points corresponding to bets of up to the immeasurably large number.

• Over Potion (Tachiai Games)

In this push-your-luck game, players pour potions into glasses and lose if they overflow. You can roughly estimate how much each player would pour by referring to the back of the cards, but some glasses may not have been filled as much as you expect.

Euro-Style Games

These games have combined mechanisms, such as tile placement and set collection. Some ambitious games have incorporated engine building as well.

• Fujiyama (Nanatsumu)

Players place hex tiles in such a way that the same color parts are connected to each other, and place animal tokens to score points. The players each draw tiles and pass one of them to each neighboring player on their sides. Then each player takes and places one of the tiles passed to them.

• Shikigami Kaidou (Shakushi Heiki)

Players collect resources and acquire Shikigami spirits in the Splendor style. Each player's two tokens are moved to indicate their Yin-Yang Master points, which influence the turn order and points to score.

• Good Night Fantasy (USAPAGAMES)

Players collectively play their cards in ascending order into the center of the table without speaking to each other, like in The Mind. Meanwhile, you can also play some cards with special effects to overcome difficulties as well as to buy new cards to make the deck easier to clear the game.

• Through the Woods (Board Game Mill)

Players collect tiles in the Tokaido style, replenish them in the bear's store, and score points in each season. The winner's player piece can ride on the swing hanging below the tree house.

• Nana Card Game (MoB+)

Players take turns to try revealing a set of three cards with the same number, each from the hand of any player, including themselves, or the play area. While any cards in the play area can be flipped and revealed, only the cards with the highest or lowest number can be revealed from each player's hand of cards, which are arranged in ascending order from left to right. If you manage to reveal a set of three 7's (the number in the middle and "nana" in Japanese), you win immediately.

• My Best Chef (Smart Ape Games)

This is an engine-building game to collect employees with resources, then use those employees' abilities to gain more resources. The employee cards are almost entirely unique in their effects and illustrations.

• Da Mafia (Wablues)

Players place their workers in any of the six locations and resolve the cards one by one to gain rewards and new workers. If different players' workers turn out to be in the same location, assassinations and other such events may occur as the card effects are resolved in order.

Others

Many innovative games that do not fit into the genres listed above were also released. It is a delight to encounter games with such unique themes at Game Market.

• Maboroshi no Nantoka Bunmei ("Illusory Something Something Civilization") (Mahoroba)

Players try to decode the words presented by mysterious symbols, which each represent a combination of a consonant and vowel, by asking questions to the Answerer. The pattern changes every time, but the "n" consonant along with voiced and semi-voiced sound marks, which are constantly used in the same way, are useful for decoding the words.

• Gomi Yashiki Card Game ("Garbage-Filled House Card Game") (Maewabi Sen-etsu)

The players each use their characters' abilities to fill every room in their house with garbage. Its initial edition was sold out last autumn, and its brushed-up reprint is now available via crowdfunding.

• Suiren to Suiren (Macoto Nakamura)

This is a memory game to distinguish the subtle differences in Claude Monet's many paintings of "Waterlilies".

• Linear Motor Car wo Kue! ("Eat a Maglev!") (Bughouse)

Players, as monsters with concealed identities, have a yaminabe ("hot pot in the dark") party in which they put all sorts of bizarre ingredients into the pot. The victory and scoring conditions vary between the monsters, so the players choose what ingredients to put into the pot according to their guesses.

• Oheya de Undoukai ("Sports Day in the Room") (Class 1-1 Laboratory, Department of Games)

This is a collection of games that can be played in the room with light physical activities for all ages.

Thus, I have listed 58 titles that caught my eye as I browsed around all the booths, but they are only some of the games brought to the Game Market and I did not even have an opportunity to play them. We will conduct a questionnaire survey on newly-released games on this website to receive comments from those who have played these games and plan to announce the results in January 2022.