tabletopgaming.co.uk 83KEY FLOW
45-75m 2-6 14+ £50K
ey Flow review in nine words:
it’s Key ower, minus hexes
and auctions, plus card
drafting. Done!
If you don’t know Key ower then
that’s as useful as mud, of course.
So: both games are from the same
design team. Both are surprisingly
intense engine-builders, where each
player constructs and populates a
village over four seasons, gathering
resources and scoring points based
on their buildings. Di erent things
happen in di erent seasons: ships
arrive in summer, stores are lled in
autumn, everything scores in winter.
Key Flow ditches hexes for cards,
and your villages are built along a river
(bottom level) and a road (top level).
e way the cards are placed is not
just strategic, it’s also deeply satisfying.
You’re creating a lovely community
that makes stu and trades with its
neighbours and it’s just ooooh.Except sometimes it’s aaargh.
From Key Flow’s art it looks like it’s
going to be pastoral and lovely, but
this is an intelligent, ercely tactical,
challenging title with ever-changing
gameplay. Speaking as a designer, I
wish I’d created this. As a player, if
you like engine-builders then this is a
must-try.
But you can’t ignore the similarities
to Key ower. ey’re like parallel
universe versions of the same game
and, honestly, if you have one then
you probably don’t want the other.
For me Key Flow just has the edge
but then I like drafting games.
One thing’s for sure: if
you’re new to the Key
universe, either of
these titles makes an
excellent start point.
JAMES WALLISH
okkaido is the direct follow-
up to Honshu, the clever 2016
map-building card game with
a surprisingly brain-burning central
mechanic of sliding cards over or
under each another to expand regions
and score as many points as possible.
Gone is the trick-taking used to
dish out cards, replaced with a faster
and more straightforward card-
drafting variant: take one, pass the
rest on. ( e rulebook notes thatHonshu can be played using the same
rules, if you already own that game.)
Making things a tad more complex
as you decide where to place your card
are new mountain squares, which
must always be placed in an ongoing
range dividing your map in two. is
feeds into a new scoring system where
only the smaller of the two largest
towns on either side of the range scores
points for each contiguous square, in a
neat encouragement of balance Reiner
Knizia would be proud of.
While the increased number of
rules makes placement a tad trickier,
you do get an extra helping hand from
the redemption of fallow squares.
Previously worth zilch, the empty plots
can now be terraformed by spending
a pair of matching resource cubes –
sacri cing their potential point value
in factories at the end of the game, but
allowing otherwise worthless regions
to help amass points by joining other
areas. It’s a small addition that makes for
an interesting weighing up of options.Hokkaido is beautifully compact and
the design is impressive on paper, but
it’s not often that much fun to actually
play. e added stipulations – like
lakes, mountains can never be covered,
but also must always be placed
together and never branch – mean
that choosing cards often becomes an
exercise in experimentation, as players
take minutes to try out every possible
combination and simply nd out
which plays are legal. is means that
picking and placing a card never feels
as smooth or strategic as it should,
there's not much freedom in what you
draft and what should be a small, fast
game bogs down in overanalysis and
ddly card placement.
e solid design foundation and
clever rules additions here are easy to
admire from afar. It's just that up close
you might nd the time and e ort is
better spent playing something else.
MATT JARVISHOKKAIDO
30m 2-5 8+ £15PLAY IT? YES
PLAY IT? MAYBE
universe versions of the same game
and, honestly, if you have one then
you probably don’t want the other.
just has the edgeOne thing’s for sure: if
Key