This review continues my series of detailed reviews that attempt to be part review, part resource for anyone not totally familiar with the game. For this reason I expect readers to skip to the sections that are of most interest.
Image Courtesy of zefquaavius
Summary
Game Type - Card Game
Play Time: 15-20 minutes
Number of Players: 2-5 (Best 3+)
Mechanics - Set Collection, Card Drafting
Difficulty - Pick-up & Play (Can be learned in under 10 minutes)
Components - Very Good
Release - 2013
Designer - <PERSON> - (Archaeology: The Card Game, Cannonball Colony, Dungeon Raiders, Flicochet, Pack of Heroes and Small World: Cursed!)
Overview and Theme
Sushi Go! comes to us from the creative mind and self-publisher <PERSON>. In this design the players are trying to grab the tastiest sushi dishes as they whiz past them in order to achieve scoring combinations over the course of 3 rounds.
Sushi Go! has been deliberately designed to be easy to learn and light enough that non-gamers can engage with it very easily.
The game was inspired by the drafting mechanic featured in games like Fairy Tale and 7 Wonders.
It became a reality thanks to a successful Indiegogo Campaign.
Grab your Sushi Mats folks and let's see if this Sushi is fresh to go or past its use by date...
The Components
Like previous Adventureland Games designs, Sushi Go! relies solely on its deck of cards. This not only reduces the fiddliness factor but also keeps production costs down too, which is super important for self-publishers.
The Sushi Cards – In all the deck is made up of 108 Sushi Cards, which offer up 11 different types of dishes. The artwork on the cards is quite simple but very cute and it reminds me of the artstic style used in the recent hit 'Dumb Ways to Die'. I would not be surprised if this art style was originally Japanese and was ripped off by the western world.
The game also comes with scoring cards for each player. 299
Each player gets 2 cards called a Train and a Tray and they can be used to display any score from 0-70 and are a great little addition, which allow players to avoid resorting to pen and paper.
All of the cards do a great job of summarising the scoring rules on the cards themselves, which eliminates excessive checking of the rulebook.
The only negative here is that the cards are a little thin for my liking and it can lead to card bending if players (children in particular) are not careful. Having said that my copy has stood up to 20 odd plays in very short time (often with 9-10 year olds) and still looks fine so I shouldn't nitpick too much.
Image Courtesy of Odd_Bloke
Card Backs – I don't often examine the backs of the cards but here a visual pattern is used that reminds me of classic Japanese anime style for surprise or excitement (you know where the background changes with the flashing lines of colour to show surprise or excitement?). This is a really neat little feature that serves to remind us of the thought and passion that self-publishers like to put into their designs.
Image Courtesy of Odd_Bloke
Rules - The rules come in a nice booklet and are clear for the most part except one small scoring rule, which I will cover later. The rules also feature a set of small comic strips with corny puns, which make them more interesting to read than most rulebooks.
The rules also offer up an excellent summary on the back page which highlights how many cards are dealt based on the number of players and a condensed version of the scoring rules. This is quite satisfactory to help players once they have a basic grasp of the game and enables quick queries to be solved in moments.
Image Courtesy of Odd_Bloke
All in all the production of Sushi Go! is very good and the only thing that lets it down just that little bit is the thin nature of the cards. I really like the packaging though as that small box format is great for transport and lines up with many other light card games on my shelves.
Image Courtesy of <PERSON>
Set-up
There is almost no set-up required of Sushi Go! before play gets underway. Each player takes a pair of scoring cards and sets their score to zero, the deck is shuffled and then a number of cards are dealt out to each player.
How many cards are dealt depends on the number of players -
2-Players : 10 Cards
3-Players : 9 Cards
4-Players : 8 Cards
5-Players : 7 Cards
Once the cards are dealt out the game is underway.
The point worth highlighting here is just how quick and easy the game is to get out and play. 872