Tokyo highway has plain, unassuming cover, yet somehow the plain grey and large white letters stands out among the dozens of boxes with browns and greens promising wealth to the person who can trade their silks or spices in the most effective manner. The box is significantly larger than it needs to be, but I can’t fault it for that, it does lend itself to an impressive image on the shelf of a board game cafe (where I first played it).
The first time I played Tokyo Highway I was at a board game cafe with my little brother. He’s always wanted to do the things I do. He’s always read the books I’ve read, played the video games I’ve played. But when it comes to board games, while he tries his best, they really aren’t his cup of tea.
I tried to introduce Century: Spice Road to him. A simple trading game, only two players, lots of room to try new things and even some helpful pointers every now and then. He took literal minutes to make each decision, unable to quantify a value for each of the cards, often prioritizing the wrong cards and leaving the strongest cards for me to pick up for free when they get to the end of the queue. Needless to say, after a long game, I ended up crushing him. By the time I picked my 6th score card he had just managed to achieve his second one.
Having already paid the $5 entry fee, we didn’t want to pack up and leave. Tokyo Highway caught my eye. A big grey box nestled on the shelf between Splendor and The Voyages of Marco Polo. I pulled the box from the shelf, checked the back for a unhelpful summary and with a shrug dumped the contents of the box onto the table. Perhaps my brother would do better if we both were learning a game for the first time.
The rules were easy to read and explain. A mere two pages with simple and helpful graphics. While I read the details of how to win, my brother busied himself with stacking his cars on top of each other. The goal of the game is simple, the first person to place all of their cars first is the winner. You get to place a car if you ever place a road above an opponents road where there are no other roads above it, or if you place a road below an opponents road where there are no other roads below it. You place your roads (Popsicle sticks) from pillar to pillar, going up and down (you must always go one above or one below the last pillar you placed) and trying to weave above and below your opponent while they try to do the same to you. If you drop an opponents piece, you have to give them some of your construction pieces AND rebuild the game state. If you run out of construction pieces, you’re out of the game.
A bit of back story on me, I’m not know for loving dexterity games. My wife absolutely adores Jenga, and when that stack of blocks hits the table I prefer to take up knitting. The stress and anxiety the grips my shaking hands when trying to surgically remove a block from this tower is not a feeling that I ever seek to replicate.
Tokyo Highway somehow overcomes that aversion and fills my heart with joy. This is a game that makes me grin from ear to ear from the early turns all the way up to the crashing conclusion. When my turn to place my next road I relish the possibilities. Do I build high above everyone, scoring easy cars for going above? Or do I play a low game, conserve my pillars and snake close to the table sneaking under the highway when I can, sometimes causing my own demise when I try to wedge myself into a spot that I just wasn’t meant to fit.
The idea that when the intricate series of highways collapses, you’re supposed to relinquish building materials and rebuild the game state didn’t really jive with my experiences. I much rather to play with the option that if you knock stuff down, then that might as well count as a loss. It doesn’t make for interesting or intriguing game play watching the player who was just embarrassed rebuild the entire structure.
From a competitive viewpoint, I don’t like it either. If someone else rebuilt my roads, but it fell on the next couple turns I’d forever be suspicious that they deliberately sabotaged my roads sending all my tiny commuters to their demise.
Part of me has to think of the thematic part of that rule. “You were not as good a builder as the rest of us, so we’re going to make you rebuild our roads too.” In any case, trying to rebuild the structure brings the game to a screeching halt. This issue is exacerbated when playing with more than two players. If multiple players in a row make a mistake, it can take entirely too long before the game gets back around to you.
I recently received the game for my birthday and promptly forced it upon my wife. The game started well with us both seemingly giddy with excitement that comes with having official car placing tweezers. We played one game that ended with a cataclysmic crash, sending at least 4 of my roads to their demise. We reset and played again, this time our roads were much tighter, resembling a double helix shape. We had junctions and half of my roads were high in the sky while the others snaked close to the ground, looking for any easy roads to sneak under. My wife took advantage of my strategy by managing to place one of her roads both above and below two of my own in a single move. I was flabbergasted with her mastery and skill with the official road placing tweezers.
I’m quite happy to have Tokyo Highway in my collection, and I do anticipate bringing it out during game days every now and then. I suspect it will be a hit with the kind of people who can’t make it through more than 15 seconds of rules, and it gets bonus points for looking great too. I can’t think of a single game of Tokyo highway that’s gone by where I didn’t pull a camera out and take dynamic shots of the impossible roads that make up Tokyo Highway.
Artist: Nikoletta Vaszi, Naomi Robinson, Benjamin Shulman
Publisher: Gamelyn Games
Banana for scale
One of the games I spent over 100 hours on in my youth was Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced. That game kicked off an addiction of an entire genre that I’ll hereby refer to as “Tactics” Other games in this Tactics genre that I loved: Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions, Final Fantasy Tactics A2, Pokemon Conquest, XCOM, Into the Breach, Banner Saga, Fae Tactics, Fire Emblem (every English release to date)… you get the idea
Side note here, I’ve never been a fan of the Advanced Wars style of tactics games. I’ve tried a few Advanced War entries, as well as Wargroove and it just doesn’t jive with me. I think (speaking specifically about Wargroove because I played it most recently) the big problem is that the specific units don’t have any kind of growth. There’s no level ups, no managing equipment or spells that make the units unique to you. You don’t affect any change to make the units yours.
It’s important to hold the high ground
Tiny Epic Tactics designed by Scott Almes and published by Gamelyn Games is a 1-4 player take on the tactics series. This entry in the Tiny Epic series is specifically designed to appeal to the gamer with a nostalgic feel for the aformentioned Tactics games. The main map is a scroll with 5 sturdy boxes stacked in various spots to create elevation. The rulebook has several modes of play (2-4 player competitve, 2 v 2 player team play 2-4 player free-for-all, 1 player solo adventure, and 2 player solo adventure. As I’ve only played the 1 player solo adventure, that’s what I’ll be focusing on here
To begin the game, you will have 4 characters to control, one from each of the 4 classes (warrior, rogue, mage, and beast). Variability here feels high as there are 8 options for each class, theoretically offering thousands of different combinations. Once your heroes are selected you set up 4 more (one of each class) as your opponents and leave the rest to the side (they can get subbed in if you successfully beat down the opposition).
8 characters for each class
You begin the game with the party split, two characters in each corner and 4 enemies randomly spawned in 3 spots closer to the middle of the board. On your turn you can do 3 actions that can be taken with up to 3 different characters. If you elect to use two actions with a single character, they’ll be put into a weakened state where they either need to not move next round, or lose two HP.
This mechanic makes it so you can’t just run up and attack in the same turn, but try and predict where your opponents will be so you can maximize your actions. it also prevents you from favoring one character too often, which you probably shouldn’t be doing if you want to win the solo game
The goal of the solo game is to explore 5 caverns, collect each of the crystals, and then fight your way through the final cavern to win the game. You lose if all 4 of your characters die, or if the game timer runs out. You start out with only 7 turns to get all of this done, but each time you defeat an enemy you regain 2 turns. This leads to a cost/benefit analysis in your head, trying to decide if it’s worth your time to spend the actions necessary to get the reward of time back on your side.
Gotta get them crystals
There are some times where you will need to knock your opponents off a cliff before you can enter the dungeons (the dungeons are the 3d terrain tiles flipped upside down), but this leads to one of the biggest challenge of the solo game. Getting everyone off the final box. When you kill an enemy character they are removed from the board. But the next turn you respawn them at one of the three spawn points with one of those spawn points being on the final dungeon. This would mean you need either to get lucky with the spawn point, kill the enemy with 2 ranged actions and one move into the dungeon, do a hit and run melee attack (either killing them or pushing them off the terrain, or lure the enemy off the box. In my (one) experience, this portion of the solo game grinds to a halt and just frustrates you against the RNG of the solo game.
The mechanics of Tiny Epic Tactics do manage to evoke feelings of the tactics games that I referenced before, but lacks any personalization beyond assembling your initial team. During the solo game I found my thought pattern following the same path that I would when playing a proper Tactics video game, such as considering elevation, or moving one character before another to take advantage of their positioning. That part of the game does feel good, but it also lacks depth. There is no character progression, no way to change the abilities of your characters, or modify the party composition to deal with changing situations.
The image quality on the boxes are much higher than the playmat
I do have a small complaint with how the dice are used in the game. Each attack uses the die in a different way. The Melee attack uses die to determine how far the target is pushed. The Ranged attack uses die to determine how many ammo has to be used before the attack is successful, and the magic uses the die to spend more mana to possibly do more damage (in my experience). This is a mild annoyance and the fact that I need to think “Is rolling dice good or bad for this action?” adds to the mental load of playing the game.
From someone who is not a Solo gamer, this solo mode felt fairly well done to the point where I will likely try to play it one more time. This time with a better understanding of what each attack does and if/when abilities could be useful. It did remind me that I’m not really a solo gamer, as a lot of the time I spent playing this on the table, I found myself thinking “I never did get around to playing Fell Seal”. It’s hard for a solo board game to make me want to play it instead of a video game, but I believe one day I’ll find the right solo system that will let me in on what makes solo gaming special.
Tiny Epic games don’t waste a lot of space in their boxes
