Okiya Review

Simply Beautiful, Beautifully Deceptive

Now don’t get me started. I hate the term ‘filler game’. As if a game is somehow less important because it is easy to learn and can be over in minutes, as opposed to one that has 100 components, takes 30 minutes to set up and lasts hours. For most of human history games weren’t like that. They were designed to be played several times over in an evening whilst you talked, ate, drank, and generally socialised. If you wanted to argue a rule it could involve sharp pointy things, not a 300 page rule book.

Okiya is a 2 player filler game. There, I said it. In fact it is possibly the definition of a filler game. But oh, what a filler game. If only they were all like this.

So let's start at the beginning. Okiya, by Blue Orange Games, is a rebranding and enlarging (literally) of their earlier release Niya. This time round the tiles & counters are a desktop friendly 75mm hardboard, rather than the much smaller earlier version. Much better at showing off the beautiful & historical design theme.

And make no mistake, beautiful this game is. The 16 square tiles for the ‘board’ are based on Japanese ‘Hanafuda’ or flower cards, developed in the 17th century when the powers that be banned European playing cards in the country. (Interesting historical fact #1: Set up in 1889, Nintendo was at first a hanafuda company. Today, it still produces some of the best and hanafuda are still popular).

Okiya reproduces faithfully 8 of the designs used on hanafuda i.e. rain clouds, birds, maple leaves, and puts two on each tile. Thus every one of the 16 tiles is unique. For the player counters (8 again for each opponent) discs of caricature Edo period portraits are used. Rarely have I seen an historical context used in design to a better effect.

The set up itself  could not be simpler.

Lay out the tiles in a random order in a 4 by 4 grid.

Pick a set of counters.

Done.

That's it. Seriously. Like great Japanese design, it is no more or less than it needs to be.

Then you play.

The rules are just as simple. In fact there are only two.

The starting player removes a tile from the outside rows of the ‘board’ (4x4 grid) and replaces it with one of their counters. The tile removed is then placed in a discard pile.

The second player can then place their counter anywhere by removing a tile. However, the tile they remove must contain one of the two symbols on the previously removed tile.

For example, if the first player removes the iris & sun tile, the second player can remove any tile as long as it contains either an iris or a sun.

Those are the rules. I did say it was simple.

To win, a player must get four in a row, either vertically, diagonally, or horizontally, or a block or square of four. Just as simple. Well, there is one more way of winning bit we will come on to that shortly.

So there we go. Okiya. So simple a child could learn very quickly (and should). A game that takes maybe 30 seconds to set up. A ‘filler game’.