Base price: $XX.
2 – 4 players.
Play time: 30 – 50 minutes.
BGG Link
Check it out on Kickstarter! (Will update link when Kickstarter is live.)
Logged plays: 2
Full disclosure: A preview copy of Tokyo Highway: Rainbow City was provided by itten. Some art, gameplay, or other aspects of the game may change between this preview and the fulfillment of the Kickstarter, should it fund, as this is a preview of a currently unreleased game.
Everything comes back around eventually, I suppose. I’m always excited to see new editions and renditions and interpretations of games I’ve loved (or hated, frankly) in the past and see what’s changed and how time and experience and a new set of eyes can really update and build up a game in conversation with itself. So, you can imagine my overwhelming enthusiasm when my beloved Tokyo Highway returned with a brand new edition. New cars, new buildings, an airport: you love to see it. I’ve been excited to write about it for some time, so let’s get to it.
In Tokyo Highway: Rainbow City, you’ve been charged with solving transportation in this colorful and wild town. Place roads above or below your opponent’s to place cars on them, trying to place all of your cars before they can place theirs. If that’s not complex enough for you, Tokyo Highway: Rainbow City also introduces an all-new Mission Mode, where you can attempt challenges for bonus points requiring you to exit at the park or the airport, do a loop around a building, or drive straight through the rainbow! Whatever you choose, you’ve got a complex highway to build and some cars to place. What kind of city will you create?
Overall: 9.5 / 10
Overall, I think this is far and away the best edition of Tokyo Highway yet. It’s a classic, elevated by some informed decisions and expansion to make a Tokyo Highway that can appeal to casual and more competitive gamers alike. The challenge remains that they still haven’t quite figured out what to do with the three- and four-player game, in my opinion, but for me, Tokyo Highway was always a two-player game at its core. There’s just an awkward spot in the gameplay where a third or fourth player accidentally knocks over a critical piece and ends the game, nobody knows who “won” or how to calculate scores (in the Mission Mode) and everyone ends up feeling a bit bad. At two players, it’s pretty easy to say the player who didn’t destroy the set won and that’s kind of that. This issue has been present since the four-player version, though, so it’s hardly news, and frankly, I’m not entirely sure how you would solve for that beyond having each player track their scores turn-to-turn in Mission Mode. Even then, if a player was about to make a high-scoring play on their turn, they may feel like the game didn’t end “fairly”. What can you do?
But that’s my major gripe. Let’s talk about what’s fun about it! First off, I think the decision to expand upon the Cars & Buildings expansion and add more fun stuff to give the city some personality and variety is brilliant. The game only really had color via the cars, so the airport and the park and the rainbow help it pop on the table. Everyone’s goal is to drive through the rainbow, and it’s quite doable, which I appreciate. So doable, in fact, that one of the Missions in Mission Mode gives you extra points for doing it! Love it when a game rewards players for doing the thing they already want to do. It’s good design. But more generally, I think Mission Mode is a very smart bit of design from itten. While I love their game designs, plenty of them are more about the experience of gaming than, say, the point-tabulation-to-victory pipeline. I respect that. Mission Mode feels like a negotiated compromise to players who want to know how “well” they played Tokyo Highway, adding a bunch of different challenges that are worth points and giving players the ability to actually score the game at its conclusion. For pro players who don’t ever completely destroy the city (… so, not me), it’s a nice way to add an additional layer of strategy and challenge. Do you want to cover your opponent’s road for 1 point, or ignore it entirely and make a loop around the red building for 2? Trade-offs abound, and I love it.
There are some additional quality-of-life improvements, like retexturing the cars so they slide less or adding grippy pads to the bottom of the roads, though I will be a little crotchety and say in my day we made due with what we had. I think this is wise, since it lowers the barrier to entry for play, but I’m entitled to whine about it a little bit. This is all to say I love Tokyo Highway; it was one of the first games that really challenged my understanding of how modern board games could play, and I have been an itten fan ever since. This lovely new set elevates the things I already liked about the core game and adds new exciting variety and challenges to keep things fresh. Personally, I think there are a lot more buildings and styles and missions that could still be added, so I’d love to see them continue to iterate on this concept. If you’re a dexterity game fan like me, you want to try something new and interesting, or you’re just looking for a fantastic two-player game, I can’t recommend Tokyo Highway (or Tokyo Highway: Rainbow City) enough! It’s one of my favorites.
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