SNAP Review – Nekojima: Curious Cats and Currents

Nekojima is Japanese for “cat island”. Unsurprisingly, there are cats there!

But it seems they not only have cats on Nekojima, they’ve also got what we’re going to call a questionable electrical network. Let’s take a look at this weird, but adorable, and unique-looking game.

This is a SNAP review for Nekojima.

Gameplay

Nekojima is a dice rolling and stacking/dexterity game designed by David Carmona and Karen Nguyen and published by Hachette.

Nekojima plays 1-5 players of really any age (just about), and a game can be as short as just 15 minutes.

Art

So Anitra, let’s talk about the art in Nekojima.

Most of the art is on the box.

But the pieces inside are these wooden poles called Denchuu with different colored string attached. Then there’s the base with the four quadrants, and some background art on the tracking board. There are some tokens to represent birds nests and, of course, these adorable cats that we’ll talk about soon.

Mechanics

So how do you play this game with these nunchuck-looking pieces?

On your turn you roll the two dice. Each die face has one of the four district colors on it, a wild face, or a dagger. The dagger means the player to your right chooses one of the four available districts.

Then, you draw a cube from this bag. If it’s black, keep drawing until you get another color.

Take a Denchuu with string that matches the color of that cube, and put it on the board. The two poles must be in the two different districts you’ve rolled (or that have been chosen for you).

• You can’t touch the string,
• you can’t have the string touch other strings,
• you can’t wrap it around the pole, and
• you can’t put a Denchuu on top of itself, even if you’re staying in the same district.

You can, however, put the Denchuu poles on top of OTHER Denchuu.

Once you’ve played your Denchuu, take as many cat tokens as black cubes that you’ve drawn. You have to hang these cats on the wires that match the color of the Denchuu you’ve placed this round.

As long as the placement is valid – and nothing falls – go to the next player.

The game ends when something falls down.

In cooperative mode, you look at your level to see if you’ve all won.

In competitive mode, there’s one loser, and everyone else is considered the winner.

There’s also a lot of variants to this game, which add to the replayability.

Expectations

So, Anitra, what did we expect from Nekojima?

It looks really cute. The art made me think a little bit of a video game I’ve been playing, called Little Kitty, Big City, which has a black cat jumping all over in a tiny little city. And stacking games always look pretty impressive on the table.

That’s true. Honestly, for me, though, I expected a little more going on with the cats. I mean it’s literally in the name, and truthfully, the cats are actually a super small part of this game.

This could have been Torijima, “Island of Birds”, or Sarujima, “Island of Monkeys”. It really wouldn’t have actually changed the game all that much at all.

Surprises

So what surprised you?

Well, I was surprised by how little cats were involved here, and honestly I was a little disappointed in how that part of the theme came through.

But casting the theme aside, I was surprised just how much I enjoyed stacking these little poles on top of each other, and trying to create this wild, bizarre, nested collection of electrical wires that couldn’t touch each other.

I also definitely was expecting a game that was a little heavier – less light, I guess – than this one is. This game feels super light and moves really fast for me.

Finally, in a family setting, I’m not sure how much I like that mechanic of “everybody wins except for the one person that loses”…

Well, that’s what the co-op version is for.

That’s true.

I enjoyed the game, but I don’t know if I was delighted by the game. And I was hoping, for the cat game, that I would be delighted by the game!

What about you?

It’s funny that you say that it’s lighter than you expected. Because for me, the turns were way more involved than I expected.

You roll dice AND you pick cubes from a bag AND you place your Denchuu and then sometimes you ALSO place cats!

I was also a little surprised at all of the variations in the rules – It’s not just there’s a competitive mode and a cooperative mode. But really codifying the different restrictions, like these bird nests you can place to show that a pole can’t be stacked on anymore; or adding restrictions that only two poles can be in a given district.

I think a little bit of experimentation can help you find the variation that works best for your family.

Recommended?

So Andrew, would we recommend Nekojima?

We would recommend Nekojima for people who really love dexterity games. I wanted to recommend this as a cute cat game with some teeth, but like I said earlier, the theme doesn’t really come through unfortunately, and the game is super light.

Don’t get me wrong! I like this game. It’s really fun, it’s just wrapped in a box that made me think that it was going to be something else. And that’s fine.

Yeah, as long as your expectations match what you’re getting here, you won’t be shocked by Nekojima.

We’re going to rate Nekojima 3 ½ circuits out of 5.

And that’s Nekojima, in a SNAP!

Find it on Amazon or at your friendly local game store.

---

The Family Gamers received a copy of Nekojima from Hachette for this review.

This post contains affiliate links, which do not change your price, but help support The Family Gamers.

SNAP review music is Avalanche, provided courtesy of You Bred Raptors?