Image courtesy of Gamewright

I wanted to give a quick review of the game Sushi Go by Gamewright. In general, the family and I enjoy it.

Sushi Go is a pass-and-play game. The game takes place in three rounds. In each round, you are dealt a certain number of cards. To play, you remove a card from your hand and reserve it in front of you face down, then you pass the rest of your hand to the player on your left. At the same time, all players turn their reserved cards face up. This cycle of passing and playing continues until the hands are depleted and the round is scored.

The types of cards make the game interesting. Some cards can be scored alone, but most require the collection of a set during the round to be worth points. There are also cards that alter gameplay but have no value in themselves. Finally, there is a class of cards that are kept from round to round and are only scored at the end of the game.

Sushi Go reminded me of a quicker, simpler 7 Wonders. (7 Wonders also features this pass-and-play mechanic.) While my former game group could play a game of 7 Wonders in the same time it takes to play Sushi Go, Sushi Go is lighter because there are fewer choices to make. I also like the fact that it is easier to set up, since 7 Wonders has boards and tokens to distribute along with cards. It definitely takes longer to explain. To me, quick and light go hand in hand.

My wife did not enjoy this game as much as I did. It took a couple of rounds of playing for me to develop an effective strategy, but she didn’t develop a feel for how to plan ahead for the cards she wanted. She normally is very good at resource management games, but I think Sushi Go felt too chaotic for her. My niece, who doesn’t normally pick “geek games”, chose to play a number of rounds of it.

If you are like me and like games where you need to alter your plans based on the state of the game, I think you’ll enjoy this one.