Tsukimi

Tsukimi is a two-player abstract strategy game inspired by the Japanese moon-viewing festival of the same name. During the celebration, rival rabbit clans gather beneath the harvest moon to claim offerings of mochi placed upon the lunar surface. Players compete to position their rabbits around the moon in order to secure the most valuable mochi tiles and earn the highest score. At the start of the game, mochi tiles are arranged around a circular moon board. On a turn, a player chooses one available mochi tile and places it onto an empty space of the moon. To take a tile, players may need to discard rabbits from their reserve depending on the tile’s distance from the temple tile along the outer ring. Each newly placed mochi tile must be adjacent to at least one previously placed tile, gradually building clusters across the moon. After placing a tile, players may apply its effects, which allow them to place rabbits onto surrounding vertices or move rabbits already on the board. Rabbits are used to control mochi tiles: at the end of the game, each tile is claimed by the clan with the majority of rabbits surrounding it. Forming groups of exactly three matching mochi tiles — by flavour or value — also allows a player to remove an opposing rabbit from the board, creating opportunities to disrupt the rival clan’s influence. Once all mochi tiles have been placed, players total the values of the tiles they control. The clan with the most points wins the festival. The game also includes a “Dark Side of the Moon” variant in which rabbit management becomes more restrictive, as rabbits are recruited and discarded from a shared supply during play.