Kokoro- Avenue of the Kodama is a game by Indie Board and Card Games that came out about a year ago. It was just ahead of a big wave of Roll and Write-style games (well, more Flip and Fill in this case).
The game is played on a players white board of which a grid map is drawn. Every turn, you have to flip a card and fill in a pathway on the board to try to connect huts to butterfly and caterpillars features. Every round, the hut changes. The trick is, however, that each time you score must be greater than your previous score, otherwise you score negative points.
This is an entertaining filler-style game. The game plays quickly, has a lack of downtime, and can accommodate between one and eight players quite easily. It also has a few neat tricks, such as the scoring and the end game scoring. In addition, you can flip the boards to introduce some random set-ups or play with a random special rule to keep it fresh.
Unfortunately, there is one thing that holds it back. That thing stems from one of the clever things it does, which also unfortunately limits a players options. The long and the short of it is that the best way to win is to make the longest continuous pathway to make sure your score keeps going up. That means that players often put down very similar pathways for a big portion of the game and stymies the creativity into just trying to make the longest path.
And that is unfortunate. In some ways, the game either didn't go far enough in limiting scoring the same features multiple times or went too far in restricting the scoring to be ever increasing. It is even more unfortunate because this could also lead to a runaway leader (although the game is pretty short to not be a problem). In the end, the game is okay but is unfortunately held back by limiting a players options.
3 out of 5 flipping waffles.
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