Yokai Forest Duel is a breezy and quick game of woodland duels for 2-8 players from German publisher Godot Games. Everyone takes control of a Yokai and attempts to battle their way to the top of the forest food chain.
Yokai Forest Duel is light and uncomplicated, and so is its official instruction video, which claims that it can teach you everything you need to know in 90 seconds.
2-8 players sort themselves into tournament brackets and compete in a series of one on one duels. All of the actions you can take when pitting your Yokai against your opponent's are fairly intuitive. You can defend, upgrade your actions, load up your slingshot, and then use it to fire rocks at your adversary in order to damage them.
Knowing how to use the upgrade system is where much of the strategy of Yokai Forest Duel lies. A turn that you spend upgrading your Yokai is one that you won't be spending engaging in combat, allowing your opponent to press the attack. Since upgrades are retained between games, however, if you only ever adopt hyper aggressive strategies and never take time out to improve yourself, then you'll head unprepared into later rounds against opponents who are much stronger than you.
If you can get enough players together, there's definitely something exciting to explore here. The idea of stalling your progress early on, in order to grow stronger over the course of 'the long game', could open up some avenues for meaningful choices. Although with only two players, you won't really be able to put on much of a 'tournament' or have enough time to fully explore the upgrade system which forms the core of the game.
Yokai Forest Duel is crowdfunding on Gamefound until the 5th February.
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