We are really happy today to release Koi-koi, a two player game of Hanafuda (Japanese traditional cards game). Hanafuda is very distinctive from Western style cards from the small size of the cards (sometimes called tiles), and from the flower and animal patterns they picture. Each set of four cards matches a month of the year, and depicts flowers and animals associated with that time of the year. As you might assume, the flow of the game is also quite distinct from Western cards (at least any I have played). On their turn, players will try to "capture" cards by matching pairs from cards on the "field" (eight cards drawn face-up at the start of the round), once with a card from their hand, then once again with the top card from the deck of undistributed cards. If no capture can be made, the card is discarded to the field. These captures go on until one of the players has created one of many possible special cards combination, called "yaku". At that point, the player must choose either to stop and score the points associated with that yaku, or say "Koi!" (which means "let's go on!") and try to increase his score by improving that yaku or creating another one. But of course, saying "Koi!" is also a big risk, since your opponent will maybe create a yaku of his own and choose to score and end the round before it's your turn again... This game has a strong component of luck, but you'll quickly discover that it's in fact all about managing your luck (with the stop or Koi! choice, and of course capturing pairs at the right time to advance your game while hindering your opponent) over a period of 12 or 6 rounds (who represent the months of one full year or half a year). Also, Koi-koi is in fact the first gambling game on BGA! 🙂 Hanafuda was an actual money game in Japanese gambling houses, and our implementation tries to keep that spirit: you start with a specific amount of gold pieces ("Koban") and each time you win or lose, money is exchanged for the score (after applying potential multipliers). So you have two ways of winning: either play through the 12 or 6 months and finish with more money than your opponent, or just quickly run him down by getting all his money very fast! Koi-koi is a quick and fun game with a very distinctive feel. We encourage you to try it and hope you'll enjoy it! To conclude this news, we would like to thank the two people that helped this be possible:

• Brian Hanechak (BrianHanechak) started the development of the game on BGA studio while being locked down at home during a snowstorm, then did a lot of the implementation work, and in the process caused me to study and learn to love Hanafuda;

• Kelsey Cretcher designed a great set of illustrations for Hanafuda cards and kindly allowed us to use them for the BGA implementation, to which they bring a beautiful and modern look. If you like her work, you can see more of her illustrations on the website http://www.kelseycretcher.com.

A big thank you to both of them!