Kodama

The latest game I backed on Kickstarter was Kodama. If you've seen Princess Mononoke, the name might ring a bell. Kodamas were those cute little forest spirits with rotating heads that became extremely popular. In this game, your goal is to grow a tree so that these cute spirits have somewhere to play and stay over the winter. Thanks to the wonderfully cute creative direction and novel gameplay mechanics that are easy to grasp and still pose a nice fun challenge, Kodama quickly became my favourite game to bring to my friends for gaming afternoons.

The central mechanism of growing a tree is brilliant. Each player has their trunk card and every round they add a branch card to expand the tree. A branch card may only be laid over one existing card in a fashion that the connection of the branch looks natural. Especially in the later parts of the game, this makes players position their branches carefully so that there is still room for future expansion and still look for a way to connect the cards so that they look natural.


It is not only about positioning cards however. Players try to get the most points and lure a kodama to their tree. Every branch card has three to four features on it - caterpillar, cloud, star, mushroom, flower or firefly. Since points are collected from creating unbroken chains of the same feature over multiple cards starting from the last one and leading towards the trunk card, players have to pick the right cards that will help them create branches that score them a lot of points. There is a rule that forbids placing such a card that would collect more than 10 points and while I don't like restrictive rules like that, because they usually show bad game design with holes that need to be fixed by extra rules, this actually makes sense and pushes players to create organic-looking trees with multiple branches on all sides.

Each trunk card comes with one feature that helps players to focus their attention for the first couple of turns but it is smart not to get too fixated on only one feature and try "branching out". Each player also receives four special kodama cards that at specific points in the game award extra points for completing conditions written on them. These conditions like "score one point for every end branch containing a firefly" are in fact another strategies for players to keep in mind because when they are played right (and at the right time), they can bring home a lot of points.

A kodama card can be played at the end of each season, of which there are three - spring, summer and autumn. They each consist of four rounds and a kodama phase and at the beginning of each season, players draw a special decree card that gives another condition or a bonus point opportunity to all of the players. The point bonus however is not a big deal, it is usually quite small and decrees do not have a big impact on the gameplay but those players, who keep them in mind, can help themselves to a nice extra point or so.

Since each season has four rounds, there are only twelve rounds in total. Kodama definitely sticks to the short and sweet side of the spectrum and it is not unusual that we played another round of Kodama as soon as we finish the first one. While the rules might seem a bit complicated, players usually get them by the time summer comes and they want to do better in the next game. The game even has special kodama cards for kids with advices and easier conditions that can help more casual players to enjoy the game more. Unfortunately, kodama cards, while not too heavy on the text, are written in slightly difficult English and make the game unplayable for people who don't understand English well, especially non-native speaker kids.

Despite that, I love introducing skilled and casual players to Kodama. Its twist on the traditional card game mechanics is fun and the simpler strategies are understandable to everybody. It doesn't hurt that one game lasts for about 20 minutes and its illustrations are super lovely and immediatelly likeable. It is exactly the game that I expect to come from Kickstarter, a non-traditional and innovative game that is more fun that it might look at first glance and I wholeheartedly recommend it to everyone.