This weekend I had a chance to attend the famed Tokyo Game Market and it was great!

Game Market features tons of Japanese board game and tabletop RPG designers and I had a lot of fun wandering the booths and checking out games, even if I couldn’t understand most of them.

Some of the more unusual games that caught my eye:

“It’s Actually Hard to Take a Photo” A game that involves building a town out of cardboard and then trying to get optimal photos that include as many animals as possible.

“Strange Vending Machine” which involves feeding (fake) coins into different vending machines.

Gift10 Industries had a few board games that used phones in interesting ways. The middle one is “Floorplan Cards VR” and has one player using a phone to look around and describe an apartment in VR while the other players race to guess which floorplan they see.

“Group Date TRPG” is a storytelling game about Japanese Gokon (group dates). One of the character archetypes is “unrequited love”

“Summon Skate” has plaers saving the world through figure skating by skating out symbols that summon monsters to help your cause.

In “Karepo” you play a woman trying to live her best life, from 20-80 years old. Designed by a financial planner!

I had a great time wandering through Game Market and would definitely go again if I happen to be in town!