Review: Sushi Boat (Japanime Games)

I hope you’re hungry, because we’re bringing a sushi restaurant to your table.

Sushi Boat, from Japanime Games, puts you right next to the conveyor belt at your favorite sushi restaurant. Playing the game is just like being there — take a plate of sushi off the conveyor, talk to the staff for help, or add a side dish or two. You can even check out new menu pairings recommended by the chef.

Let’s grab a cup of green tea and a place mat, because t’s time for the top five things you need to know about Sushi Boat.

Delicious Table Presence

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I don’t usually begin with shout-outs about table presence and component quality, but Sushi Boat earns these kudos.

The team at Japanime Games did a clever job recreating the conveyor belt sushi experience. The wooden game board features belt segment markings and a covered section that mimics the mechanical requirements of a real conveyor belt.

They carried the theme on from there with a glass wasabi bowl, a restaurant-style plastic change tray for game money, and many other touches.

Sushi on the Conveyor

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The game includes 54 super-cute plastic plate tiles in five colors. Each plate is decorated with a full-color image showing one of the game’s seven types of sushi servings. The plates slide smoothly around board’s curved conveyor belt and stack easily on your board during play.

The movement of plates around the conveyor belt isn’t just for looks (or because they’re so much fun to play with). The conveyor belt is actually a key mechanic in the game.

Each turn, the active player reveals the top card from the draw deck and pushes the sushi along the conveyor. If the card has a green arrow, the player adds fresh plates of sushi from the draw bag until the conveyor is full. If it has a red trash can, the player does the same thing, except pushes one extra plate onto the conveyor, causing a plate to fall off the conveyor and into the trash.

Taking a Turn

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Now that you know the fun of the conveyor belt, let’s look at a full game turn.

The turn begins with you flipping the top card from the deck and moving the sushi on the conveyor. Then it’s time to pick a seat by placing your pawn on the board. Each seat gives you access to a different area of the conveyor belt. Some seats are near restaurant staff who will help you if you tip them. (More about that in a moment.)

You then perform one of three actions: take 1 Yen from the bank, pay 1 Yen to buy the top card from the discard pile (the card you just revealed), or talk to the staff.

Finally, you claim a plate of sushi from the conveyor and stack it on your mat. Play continues to your left. You score points in the game by collecting sets of colored sushi plates, by eating different types of sushi, and by playing side dish cards.

Staff Members and Side Dishes

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Two of your options on a turn involve paying a Yen to either get help from the staff or buy a card and add it to your hand.

The card you flipped over is from the side dish deck. Each side dish card shows some delicious food, along with special game text that does anything from give you one victory point to swapping plates on the conveyor belt. After buying a card, you can play it on a future turn to use its special ability.

Paying a Yen to tip a staff member activates their special ability. Staff members can pull sushi out of the trash (well, that one’s a cat), hand you a plate that’s out of your reach, or even summon a different staff member.

The Wicked Wasabi

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If you ever ate sushi, you probably tangled with wasabi, the wickedly spicy green condiment that commonly goes with sushi. When you draw a Wasabi card in Sushi Boat, you first dump all the trashed plates of sushi back into the bag.

After that, you and all of the other players try to remember which sushi plates are hidden under the cover in the corner of the conveyor. Everyone takes two wasabi cubes each and places them on their mat’s colored dots. The current player then adds new sushi plates to the conveyor until the hidden plates are revealed (and trashing several other plates in the process).

For each color you guessed correctly, you keep one wasabi cube, which counts as an extra point at the end of the game.

Verdict

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With a fun theme, easy rules, deep replayability, and a delicious table presence, Sushi Boat is an all-around winner for any family or friends game night.

The mix of hidden sushi plate draws, unique staff member special abilities, and the random side dish card abilities )plus their impacts on the sushi conveyor) mean you’ll never play the same game twice.

Sushi Boat delivers excellent quality and engaging player experiences from the moment you feel the weight of the box in your hands. You can see the care they took with this title in the wooden board, the sushi plate pieces — even in the way the game packs into the box insert.

The first printing of the game includes the deluxe wooden game board. The company’s Kickstarter says that future printings won’t include the wooden version, so look for this at your Friendly Local Game Store. Highly recommended!