Attendees at this year’s Origin’s Game Fair, will get a nice surprise when they visit the Passport Game Studios booth (#138)…the first public unveiling of the upcoming digital release of Tokaido.
It seems that Passport Game Studios has been quietly working with Funforge to bring Antoine Bauza’s 2012 hit Japanese-themed traveling and set collection game Tokaido into the digital realm.
Unlike many other digital board game ports, Passport Game Studios President, Scott Morris, explained that this is “not just a digitized version of the board game…instead…they started with a video game mentality and designed a video game that just happens to be based on a board game”.
As you can see in the included screenshots, the result is a rich 3D world, with beautifully rendered characters and environment. Tokaido has always been a gorgeous looking game, and now this digital app transforms that beautiful art style into an explorable environment by adding another dimension. There are loads of animations that bring the world to like and the collectible art panoramas look like they are being painted on the screen as you collect new segments.
The app is still currently in development, but it looks like it is coming along beautifully! The UI is silky smooth and well thought out, allowing players to zoom in and zoom out and pan across the exquisite landscape to select where they would like to travel to next. Covering all of their bases, there is also the more traditional overview of the road with all of possible spaces laid out linearly across the bottom of the screen for quick access/ reference if the player prefers. There are even several playback speeds as well to speed up the already snappy animations.
You’ll be able to play with up to 5 players via pass and play, or some combination of human and AI players (including solo play). Players may select either the shorter one-way trip from Kyoto to Edo or the round trip back to Kyoto as well. The demo version available at the show doesn’t have online/networked play, but that should be part of the final release. The app is due out later this year and will be available on both iOS and Android and possibly Mac and PC as well. I’m not sure if it’ll just be an iPad release on iOS or if iPhone will be supported as well.
Rodney Smith of Watch It Played recorded a great Periscope from Origins with Scott Morris where he runs through the highlights of the app and you can see the animations.
I’ve been enamored with Tokaido ever since seeing it on the third season of TableTop and have played another digital implementation of it quite a few times. However this new app looks like it takes the experience to a whole new level of immersion and polish. SO EXCITED for this release!
