Tokaido.

Tokaido came out in 2012, the third hit title in three straight years from designer Antoine Bauza (7 Wonders, Takenoko), and like those previous two titles, it combines elegant rules and beautiful artwork into a short game time that allows for frequent replay. This year brought a Tokaido app (iOS • Android) that has fantastic animations and a solid tutorial, although I did hit one glitch in one game.

The Tokaido was the most important of the Five Routes of the Edo period in Japan, all government-regulated paths for travel and trade, with the Tokaido connecting Edo (now Tokyo) to the imperial capital of Kyoto. In this boardgame, each player takes on a specific character of a Japanese traveler who will move along a straight track that includes various stops where the player can take a specific action, as well as four inns where the player can buy a meal for victory points. The order of the stops varies along the track, and the player who is furthest back on the track gets the next turn. There are six distinct types of stops in the game: gain 3 coins; take one “encounter” card (which gives you something good at random); donate to the temple for one point per coin; buy one or more souvenirs; take a hot springs card for either 2 or 3 points; take the next card for one of the three panoramas in the game. The souvenirs come in four types, and cost 1 to 3 coins each; you gain points for each different type you collect in a set, 1 for the first card, 3 for the second, 5 for the third, 7 for the fourth, so potentially 16 points for each quartet you collect. The three panoramas are all different lengths, and you gain points for each card you collect; the longest is five cards, and you’d get 15 points for completing it (1+2+3+4+5).

At each inn, you can choose to buy a meal, each of which is worth six points. Some cost 1 coin, some cost 3, and the first person to reach the inn thus gets first choice of all of the meals for that round (you draw one card per player plus one more). If you get there last, you get the last choice, and may have to pay more, but you will be the first to leave the inn for the next round. You can’t buy the same meal twice in the same game, however.

There are also seven bonus cards for 3 points apiece. The first player to finish each panorama gets a 3-point card. The player with the most encounter cards, the most meal cards, the most hot springs cards, and the most souvenir cards at game-end gets a 3-point bonus card for each as well. The temple gives bonuses to the most generous players, 10 to whoever gave the most over the course of the game, then lower bonuses to each donor below that.

The nature of the game means blocking other players can be an effective strategy, especially given the way the scoring rewards players for hitting the same destination type (or color) repeatedly. I think it’s more valuable in 2- or 3-player games, where only one player can occupy any stop on the track at a given time, than in 4- or 5-player games, where some track locations have a second spot for another player. You may wish to stop another player from finishing a panorama, or keep a player who’s low on cash from hitting the 3-coin space. That said, even in a smaller game, I wouldn’t use this as a primary strategy; there’s a big opportunity cost to skipping spaces if you’ve visited that color type earlier in the game.

Although you can move as far along the track as you want on your turn, in reality, your best move is nearly always to take the next open space. Skipping spaces can give other players additional turns before you get to go again, so until the fourth section (the last set of spaces before the game ends), you’ll probably want to take the next space every time, maybe occasionally skipping just one space to get something specific, like moving to a yellow spot to get 3 coins if you’re out of cash. In the fourth section, it can make more sense to move ahead to complete a panorama or try to get the fourth souvenir in a set because those deliver higher points rewards than other moves. Those will depend on what you’ve accomplished earlier in the game, and sometimes what others have done – there’s a 3-point bonus for being the first to complete each panorama, and end-game temple bonuses depend on who donated the most – will alter your choices.

The app, by Funforge’s digital division, looks fantastic. Rather than simply implementing the boardgame as a 2D experience, they’ve animated everything, so you see the board from an isotropic view and the player-characters jog from space to space. There’s also a line at the bottom of the screen that represents all the possible stops between inns, so you can see what’s coming up, and you can press there to select your next destination or you can scroll through the 3D view to get there. Each time you stop at any place that will require a decision, you get a fresh screen that shows you all of your options – for example, at the souvenir stand, you’ll see the three choices for you at that stop, and on the left side are the four symbols with numbers indicating how many of each you already own. (I played the iOS version.)

I did experience one bug in the app, just the second time I played it, and it hasn’t recurred since: one of the animated AI characters ran to the next stop but couldn’t quite get there and ended up sort of running in place. I had to kill the app and restart it to get out of that. There’s only one level of AI player, but I’ve found it to be perfectly competent, enough challenge for me as a relative newbie to the game.

Bauza’s got quite a track record of successful designs, and I’d rate Tokaido behind three of his better-known titles – 7 Wonders, Takenoko, and the two-player game 7 Wonders Duel – but ahead of the Spiel-winning coop game Hanabi or 2016’s Oceanos. My daughter, now 11, loved it right out of the box and picked up the strategy pretty quickly, so I’m comfortable recommending it as a good family game that you can easily play on a school night given its 30 to 40 minute playing time.