Beautiful map-building card game Honshu gets a sequel, Hokkaido

Honshu, the 2016 game of laying down cards to create gorgeous Japanese towns, is now the first in a new series of map-building card games.

The second instalment in the newly-christened Nippon series is Hokkaido, a standalone sequel to Honshu that features similar gameplay expanded by the introduction of a card-drafting mechanic and a greater importance placed on the layout of players’ cities as they overlap the regions on cards to maximise their score.

Honshu designer Kalle Malmioja and artists Ossi Hiekkala and Jere Kasanen are behind the follow-up, which relocates the action north to the titular mountainous Japanese island – an apparently more challenging terrain than the original game.

The rest of the game’s known details will be familiar to Honshu fans: the two-to-five player count remains unchanged, as does the estimated 30- to 40-minute play time across the 12 two-phase rounds.

Honshu publishers Renegade and Lautepelit.fi will be putting out Hokkaido in February next year. It’ll cost $25 (£19) in the US.