Posted on by Amber Holt

Takenoko Review – Amber Holt

  1. Was it fun? Yes, this game was fun. I enjoyed the mechanics of this game, it reminded me a little bit of Catan, which I haven’t played in YEARS. The bamboo pieces and the art was super cute too. I love these Japan themed games!!!
  2. What were the player interactions? The player interactions were influenced by the actions that players made on their turns. For instance, if someone placed a certain color plot in a certain area, that may mess up other players’ cards for earning points for the layouts. Also if the players moved the panda to eat certain colors of bamboo, it would also mess up other players for completing certain objectives. Since this was an entirely new game for all of us, we also tried to help each other out a little bit, helping to guide each other’s moves for their turns. 
  3. How long did it take to learn? It didn’t take very long at all to learn. The mechanics aren’t super complicated, and they are similar to other games. Although we realized about halfway through the game that we had misunderstood a part of the directions and were technically playing incorrectly so learning the rules wasn’t totally smooth lol. 
  4. Would you play it again? Yes, I would play this game again, especially since now I know how to properly place the irrigation channels as the game intended. 
  5. Analyze the game using the 3 act structure: The first act would have been the initial rounds of the game where we were still learning the rules and mechanics. This would also include the building of the game board itself because tiles were only placed during people’s turns. The second act would have been when we had a better grasp on the game. This is when we started being able to complete some objective cards and figured out how we could maybe affect other players by placing certain tiles or eating certain colors of bamboo. The third act would have been around when Colin got 6 cards. We knew that once he completed the last card that the final round would begin and he would get special points for that. It was pretty evident that no one else was going to reach 7 cards before him, but we were still a little uncertain about who would actually win, although Colin was very likely to. We then counted all of the points on our objective cards and sure enough, Colin won.
  6. What are the collaborative and or competitive aspects of the game? This was a competitive game. Players competed against each other to complete 7 objective cards and whoever collected all 7 triggered the final round of play where players had the chance to complete as many remaining objectives as possible. The winner was based on whoever had the most points according to their completed objective cards. 
  7. What is the game’s metaphor and which of the game’s mechanics standout? The game’s metaphor is a panda who is essentially taking over and eating a bunch of bamboo and a gardener is sort of trying to stop him. They included a comic to tell this story which was super cool!! One of the game’s mechanics that standout to me the most is having to roll a die to determine the weather conditions for your turn. Different weather conditions mean different things and all give you a different advantage for your turn. 

4 Replies to “Takenoko Review – Amber Holt”

  1. This is a very pretty visual game but personally it is not fun if you have to learn how play it in a diffrent language – I had to for another class.

  2. Takenoko was one of the games I did not get to play…It sounds so intriguing; I’m going to have to look into it more.

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