KOI
KOI
Koi-nd of brilliant
Designers: Rosaria Battiato, Massimo Borzì, Martino Chiacchiera | Publisher: dV Games
Koi is a tile-laying game of creating beautiful ponds full of koi carp, which blends a refined theme with light drafting and pattern-building mechanics. Despite this lightness, there’s a crunchy heart at the centre of the game.
Koi has a certain classic feel to it. The general trend in Eurogames over the past decade has been to borrow from other design disciplines, while doubling down on smoothing out the ‘user experience’ and taking out friction and true fail states. Koi bucks this trend and, frankly, feels great for it. You can fail, and worse (or better) than that, you can badly plan your pond and end up with something a little unsatisfying to look at. Players often get to shrug off the results of a poorly played tableau game if they’ve got a nice set of tiles in front of them, but not so here.