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While I was at Gencon, I had the pleasure of stopping by the XYZ Game Labs booth to check out their most recent card game, Inoka!
Players take on factions of enlightened forest creatures, the Inoka, and compete to determine who will Nature’s Emissary.
The game plays a bit like an enhanced, multiplayer Rock, Paper, Scissors, but with plenty of twists! Each player receives 9 tactic cards at the start of the game: Attacks, Blocks, and Taunts, each of which has a strength of 1, 2 or 3. Generally, Attacks beat Taunts, which beat Blocks, which then beat Attacks, and when cards of the same type meet each other, the higher strength wins. But here’s the catch: Each player selects only 5 cards to use in the round. So you can never be sure which tactics your opponents are going to focus on.
The game supports up to four players (or more if you have more than one game), but hands generally run the same: Each player secretly selects a card and all are revealed at once. The player who wins the most “matchups” against all other cards gains the Leaf Totem, representing their advantage in the competition. If the player with the Leaf Totem can win a hand using an Attack tactic card, they win the round. The first player to win 3 rounds wins the game and becomes Nature’s Emissary for the foreseeable future.
For players who prefer a more turn-based approach, there are alternate rules to allow for players to clash in a rotating, turn-wise fashion instead.
I had the chance to play this game in its early development stages, and I can tell you that it is a load of fun. The game recently launched and succeeded on Kickstarter, but the folks at XYZ say that the BackerKit should be launching sometime in August, for those who wish to make late pledges!
In the meantime, feel free to peruse the links and the Kickstarter Updates and look at the gorgeous artwork. 🙂
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