Description

From Bruno Faldetti's Review:

The name sounds like a Japanese war cry, and the game looks a bit like Go. With its large square box and its flat black box, Ooyoo could have been one of these strange games that we used to look with eagerness and curiosity in the Impensé Radical bookshop, in Paris, in the late seventies and early eighties. Yes, I know I'm getting old. Nothing oriental though in this game, since the exotism is fake, and author and publisher both German.

Ooyoo, however, is what it looks like : a simple and subtle strategy game, with three lines of rules, that could well become a classic. Like in Halma or Chinese Checkers, each player starts in a corner of the board and tries to bring all his stones in the opposite corner. The trick is in the simple and original movement rule : stones can only move by pair, two adjacent stones moving one space in the same direction. This makes for various blocking and turning strategies, especially since each player has an uneven number of stones, and can't move backwards in his own half of the board.

Ooyoo is much more subtle than Chinese Checkers, but doesn't pretend to be as deep and as Go - the similarity is mostly in the overall look. This excellent strategy game deserves to become a modern classic, along with Twixt, Focus or Lines of Action, and can also make for a nice and slightly lighter change for Go or Chess players. Furthermore, it really looks like an exotic traditional game that you brought back from holidays, and will make a strong impression in your lounge.