A review copy of The One Hundred Torii was provided by Pencil First Games
As a teenager, I was an unabashed weeb. Growing up in a small town in northern Manitoba, I voraciously consumed as much anime as I could get my hands on, which, in the early to mid 00’s, was not very much. I had the local pharmacy special order me in Shonen Jump every month, I would use school computers to download fan translated episodes of manga and anime, distributing them to two others in my school on the down-low. I loved Japan, I wanted nothing more than to speak the language and travel there. Any time I got to choose a project in school, I’d use it as an excuse to learn more about Japan.
While I’ve not yet completed my dream of travel, and my consumption of anime and manga has waned in my 30’s, anything Japanese themed still always grabs my attention. Given the opportunity to marry my love of board games with my affinity for the theme makes for a very happy game night.
How to Play
Designed by Scott Caputo, art by Vincent Dutrait, and published by Pencil First Games, The One Hundred Torii proclaims that life is a journey, not a destination. In The One Hundred Torii, players are trying to earn the most points by expanding the garden, and walking through as many Torii gates as possible, accruing experiences in the form of monument sightings, and interacting with characters.
The game begins with a central tile depicting all 6 monument types. On your turn you can pay monument tokens to enlist the help of one character, then, you expand the garden by placing a tile adjacent to any tile. Each tile has a road on all 4 edges, meaning other than placing adjacent to an existing tile, there are no placement restrictions.
When you place a tile, you select one of the features on the tile and trace the shortest path to another one of those features already in the garden. If there’s a match, you earn a token depicting that feature. If you cross under any red torii gates, you’ll get additional tokens of that feature, and if you cross under any blue torii gates, you’ll earn any feature of your choosing, other than the one you are scoring.
The goal of the game is to earn the most points, and you do so by collecting these feature tokens. When you have 5, you turn them in and take a big 5 point marker of that feature type. Then, when you take 5 more, you turn those in, and flip the point marker over to the 10 point side.
In addition to collecting features, you also get rewards for interacting with the characters. At the start of each round, you can pay feature tokens to enlist the help of various characters. The Poet sits their bottom down on a tile, blocking one feature, allowing you to potentially really extend what the shortest path you’d create. The Samurai sits outside the garden, and prevents a tile from being placed in that spot. The geisha, allows you to place both of your tiles, but you only get to score the second one you place.
The first time you use a character, you take a 2 point scroll representing your interaction with them. If you enlist their help again, that scroll flips over to the 4 point side. And if you were the first person to use a character 3 times in one game, you get a big 3 point bonus.
Gameplay continues around and around, players enlisting help, expanding the garden, and claiming rewards until the tile deck is empty. Then all players take one more round and the player who has the most points is the winner!
Review
The One Hundred Torii features beautifully illustrated art on the cover, and equally delightful art inside. The characters, the tokens, and the tiles are all colourful and pleasant to look at. The cardboard quality is perfect, not thin and cheap feeling, but also not overwrought. The aesthetic of The One Hundred Torii is quite calming, so I feel that an over-done production would actually pull away from the experience.
The box comes with a guide in how to put it away, which I found surprising considering how small the game box is. Usually these guides are reserved for games like Scythe or Anachrony. After punching everything out and trying to follow the guide to pack everything away, I can see why it was included. There are piles and piles of little cardboard chits that have a propensity to scatter everywhere if the box is slightly tilted in the wrong direction.
The gameplay of The One Hundred Torii is simple; enlist the help of one of the characters, then place a tile, and collect your rewards. At first, getting through just one or two gates will feel like an accomplishment. As the game goes on, your actions can give way to other players being able to make even better turns than you, and vice versa. Alternatively, the most lucrative route will get closed off, and you’ll suddenly feel like you’re falling behind.
As the game wears on, the decision space organically grows and shrinks. Someone will place a tile with a monument that you were hoping to cash in on, in the wrong space, making your path go from 5 gates to just 1. But then, as play continues, the paths between monuments grow longer, and opportunities that didn’t exist a moment ago suddenly present themselves to you. Someone just so happens to cover a tile that perfectly assists you in achieving your goals.
Speaking of goals, the goals in The One Hundred Torii are very attainable, meaning players don’t really need to hyper-focus on a specific monument type. There’s fluidity in the achievements, which offers grace in the tile placement. Yes, sometimes your action will be less efficient than your opponents, and yes, sometimes you were kind of hoping to score 4 Inari Statues, but plans change, and you’ll pivot to collecting 2 arched bridges and a lantern this round instead.
The characters that you can enlist allow you to break the rules in perfect little ways. Just enough to get you out of a tough jam, but not too aggressive in that they’re horribly over-powered. They cost you some of your monument tokens every time you want to enlist one, giving you a delightful little push and pull of benefits and drawbacks. The game encourages you to use the same guest 3 times to maximize the points you’ll earn from those actions, but the benefit of doing so is incredibly small, giving you the freedom to diversify your friend group to fit your needs.
The One Hundred Torii puts genuine effort into educating players as to what each of the tokens and characters represent. From engaging with a Culture Consultant (Lisa Wilcut) to dedicating 5 pages of their 20 page rule book to detail the significance of everything in the game, to the personal letter by artist Vincent Dutrait crediting his inspirations and detailing the efforts he took to ensure the game looked authentic, alive, and exotic, I appreciate the efforts The One Hundred Torii goes through to pay homage and respect to its theme.
Getting back to the gameplay, The One Hundred Torii is a calm game. Yes, there’s some opportunity to stifle your opponent’s plans by placing a tile in the wrong spot, but there’s so many mechanics available to subvert that kind of play, that the game ends up being a calm, peaceful experience. We had a lovely time just sitting back, placing tiles, and collecting monuments representing the memories that come from strolling through the Japanese gardens.
I quite enjoyed The One Hundred Torii, more than I expected to, considering it’s just a tile laying game. This game is more than the sum of its parts, and I’m glad I got the opportunity to play it. The only thing holding me back from playing it more is the substantial number of cardboard tokens that need to be sorted each time I play. Nevertheless, I appreciate The One Hundred Torii for its gorgeous artwork and simple gameplay, and won’t hesitate to introduce anyone who is looking for a chill game to play while enjoying each other’s company.
