Kyoto no Neko

I was kind of hyped up a little for Kyoto no Neko and put it on my wishlist just based on the box art alone. The concept sounded neat: you are a kitten exploring their neighborhood, navigating the city and making discoveries and encounters.

There are some really nice components for the game: themed envelopes to hold tokens and cards, cardboard chests that hold the player tokens for easier setup, and the little textured cat tokens.

The game is fairly simple: on your turn you may move up to your current movement limit, flipping paw tiles that show different kinds of encounters, and then you may take an action if you’re in the same square as a tile. Encounters can range from running away from a barking dog, climbing up a tree to peek at face down paw tiles, or even befriending or fighting other cats. You resolve encounters via skill checks, you roll a die and add your current modifier for the related skill. If you succeed, you usually get a bonus action or token as a reward. If you fail, then you move up your stat block so that next time it should be easier to handle those types os skill checks again. Sometimes, failure will result in small consequences, such as being forced to move back towards your home square.

While the production for the art in the game is stunning, there’s definitely issues with some of the components. Namely, the standees and the feet for them are cut too wide and so they wobble and fall. Trying to maneuver the cyclists is a very delicate procedure. It’s so much an issue that Matagot included a separate sheet with tighter standee bases.

It’s very much a lighter weight game and not quite what I expected. As I was reading the rules, I was thinking to myself: “oh, this is a skill checks. And this is also a skill check. Huh, okay, everything is just a skill checks.” And it’s fine for the kind of cozy and relaxed game it’s aiming to be, I just don’t find it to be particularly interesting as a game. And in an odd twist and decision, there’s PvP and stealing as the base game which I feel clashes with what appears to just be a chill time.

There are scenarios that add in new goals and encounters but otherwise the game isn’t drastically changed. At least if you shuffle all the goals and randomize what to do perhaps at least from game to game you’ll aim for different things, but you’re still doing the same thing: move and skill check. It’s unfortunate that the competition in my library is so high that I don’t think it’ll have staying power, even with its cat theme and beautiful art.