For all sudoku lovers!

Do you like sudoku? I love puzzle games like minesweeper, nonograms or sudoku, which is why Hiroba got on my radar last year. 🙂 It is an abstract area-control game with Sudoku mechanics that plays with 2-4 players. It also does look quite appealing for an abstract, with its Koi ponds and Zen gardens! Though I have been interested in it since SPIEL22, we only got it now with a recent impulse buy at UKGE, but it was definitely a good choice! ✌️

So how does it work? 🧐 First you randomly lay out a map of 3x3 tiles (though with 2 or 3 players some will be face down). Each tile contains two gardens and a Koi pond. Gardens can have sizes from 2 to 6 squares, which is also their point value for whoever has majority at game’s end.

Players have stones 🪨 numbered from 1 to 9, these are double-sided and the faces always add up to 10 (so e.g. you could place two 9s in a game).
As the game begins everyone places a tile somewhere in turn order. After that you can only ever place stones in the same row or column as one of your previous stones. This strongly influences your placement options, so you have to plan for future turns as well.
There are also some important rules you could know from Sudoku: a number can only be present once in each row and column, and also only once in each garden. As the game goes on it will be more and more difficult to find good valid placements.

You just simply place a stone each until everyone has placed all 9, then see who won the majorities in each garden and add up points. 🏆 To spice things up you can also win Koi fish 🐟 that can double the point value of gardens. Whoever has the biggest sum of points in a garden wins that garden’s points, however for Koi fishes the smallest sum in adjacent spots wins. So it can be worth it to place your smaller stones too. Tied players all score the appropriate points.

💬 We have played 4p with @bearwithmeeples and now 2p as well: 4p is obviously better as there are more stones and more player colors influencing the board state, and it’s also much less zero-sum. However 2p isn’t bad either. You only have 5 tiles in play, and can better counterplay your opponent, games are very short as well.