Kanare Kato is a rather prolific game designer, best known for creating games that can be packed into a small box and taken anywhere.
To that list, you can add Ripples, a game that takes minutes to understand in terms of rules and plays quickly—it’s suggested to last 15–30 minutes, but you’d have to be very analytical with your moves to stretch it to half an hour.
For two players, Ripples is an abstract strategy game where you battle for control of a 61-hex board. When the board is full, the winner is the player with the majority of pieces—so no draws are possible.
It’s a territorial game that uses double-sided discs like Othello, but the discs placed by a player are always immediately surrounded by discs of the same color. So, you’re flipping a lot of pieces on most turns, which for older players with larger hands can be a bit clumsy on the smaller cloth board—common to Kato’s games.
The board is initially empty.
On a turn, a player places a disc of their color face up in any empty hex. Then they flip over all of the opponent’s discs adjacent to the disc just placed and place discs of their color in all empty hexes adjacent to it. That’s it for rules—super simple.
This one works because it’s simple to learn and quick to play. If it were longer in terms of playtime, it would overstay its welcome, as they say. There’s just not quite enough here to justify a longer session.
It’s the same thing in terms of repeat play. Ripples isn’t a game where you want to hunker down over the table and play all afternoon. Three games are satisfying—a best-of-five, sure—but a best-of-seven might push the limits of Ripples holding your interest. Better to play a few, slip it back into the game bag, and bring it out again in a few weeks for another round.
Still, as a neat little time filler, Ripples holds a certain level of charm.
Check it out at kanare-abstract.com
About Author
Calvin Daniels is a Saskatchewan-born, self-taught journalist. He is currently Editor of Yorkton This Week, with 35-years in the newspaper business.
Every Move Has a ‘Ripple’ Effect
Kanare Kato is a rather prolific game designer, best known for creating games that can be packed into a small box and taken anywhere.
To that list, you can add Ripples, a game that takes minutes to understand in terms of rules and plays quickly—it’s suggested to last 15–30 minutes, but you’d have to be very analytical with your moves to stretch it to half an hour.
For two players, Ripples is an abstract strategy game where you battle for control of a 61-hex board. When the board is full, the winner is the player with the majority of pieces—so no draws are possible.
It’s a territorial game that uses double-sided discs like Othello, but the discs placed by a player are always immediately surrounded by discs of the same color. So, you’re flipping a lot of pieces on most turns, which for older players with larger hands can be a bit clumsy on the smaller cloth board—common to Kato’s games.
The board is initially empty.
On a turn, a player places a disc of their color face up in any empty hex. Then they flip over all of the opponent’s discs adjacent to the disc just placed and place discs of their color in all empty hexes adjacent to it. That’s it for rules—super simple.
This one works because it’s simple to learn and quick to play. If it were longer in terms of playtime, it would overstay its welcome, as they say. There’s just not quite enough here to justify a longer session.
It’s the same thing in terms of repeat play. Ripples isn’t a game where you want to hunker down over the table and play all afternoon. Three games are satisfying—a best-of-five, sure—but a best-of-seven might push the limits of Ripples holding your interest. Better to play a few, slip it back into the game bag, and bring it out again in a few weeks for another round.
Still, as a neat little time filler, Ripples holds a certain level of charm.
Check it out at kanare-abstract.com
About Author
Calvin Daniels
Calvin Daniels is a Saskatchewan-born, self-taught journalist. He is currently Editor of Yorkton This Week, with 35-years in the newspaper business.
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