Description

The title of this game, ???????? (Bonkure Sh?gatsu Ry? Higan), translates roughly as “Bongure New Year’s Equinoctial Week”, which refers to times of the year when in Buddhist traditions extra thoughts are paid to your ancestors. The game is themed around visiting the graves of your departed family members through a trick-taking mechanic.

The suits in the game correspond to your different family members (e.g. Grandpa, Aunt, "That Uncle"), and each is worth a different number of points. At the start of a hand, players choose one card from their hand to bid with.

During the game play, tricks can have 1 or 2 winners. The first winner of the trick is the person who played the highest card of the lead suit or the trump suit (monks). That player takes each of those cards, and sets them in a pile next to their bid card, with a specified card on top. If any players visited the grave adjacent to the lead suit, that suit can also have a winner, and that person makes a similar stack.

At the end of the game, a player has met their bid if in the piles they've created next to it from winning tricks, they are showing another card of the bid suit, and the points for the visible cards sum to exactly the rank of the bid card. The player who met their bid and scored the most points wins.

The game includes several "advanced" modules, such as special powers; a tie-break card; and a story-telling aspect where the winner of a trick is encouraged to share a memory of a family member of the lead suit.