Looking for a game to get your friends into board games or do you miss fishing season? If the answer is yes to either, check out Tonari!
Tonari is a 2-4 player game by designer Bruno Faidutti and published by IDW. Based on an earlier game design by Alex Randolph, Tonari is a game about a fishing village on the island of Kuchinoshima.
Tonari: $29.99
Get It For Less At Miniature Market
The small island of Kuchinoshima has been hit by a terrible storm, leaving the village with only a single fishing boat. Each hoping to prove themselves the village’s best fisherman, 2-4 players take turns moving the boat marker around the island, collecting any fish tiles they land upon. At the end of the day, the player with the best haul wins, but there’s a twist – each player’s score is added to their left neighbor’s score before determining the winner!
Contents:
42 Plastic Tiles
1 Boat Marker
1 Game Board
1 Rulebook
Ages: 10+
Players: 2-4
Game Length: 30 minutes
Bring In The Best Catch With This Board Game: Tonari
A devastating storm has wiped out every boat except one. You have agreed with the other fishermen to share this boat and work together to feed the village. Each player however still wants to show off their fishing skills by bringing in the best haul.
Tonari has players taking turns moving the same boat until there are no longer any possible moves. Points are then added up and the winner is the one with the most. There is an interesting twist. In a three or four-player game, you add your points with those of the player to your left. This adds a bit to the teamwork aspect. You want to kinda help your neighbor but you don’t want to help too much. It makes for an interesting balance that you cannot fully plan for.
Each of the four primary fish, red, blue, yellow, and green, are worth more points the more you have of them. Ideally, you want to focus on a single color or two. There are also shrimp with grant eight points no matter how many you have. These points are only to the player who has the most shrimp, however. The rare pink fish are worth five points but are much harder to catch.
You see, in order to catch the pink fish, you must have an empty space between you and the fish in a straight line and jump to it. You can hop the island spaces to achieve this as well. There is also trash floating around left by the storm. These are worth a negative five points if you are unlucky enough to have to catch these.
Other than fish there will be bonus tokens floating around with the fish. Some let you swap fish with an opponent after all the boat is rocking violently and some fish could get mixed up right? Others let you chum the waters to move fish around. You can also make a certain basic colored fish worth twice as many points.
I thoroughly enjoyed how fast and fun Tonari is. The gameplay is set for thirty to forty-five minutes, but I’ve definitely had games go for only ten or fifteen. Absolutely a great filler game for a busy game night. The components are beautiful each fish token is a hard plastic disk that can take a beating. And the art is just wow, Kwanchai Moriya is simply phenomenal. The board artwork is amazing, he rendered the water to look just like an oil painting.
If you are looking for a gateway game or just a quicker filling title, then Tonari is a perfect addition to your collection. I can’t recommend this one enough.
