Designed by: Jeffrey D. Allers
Inspired by Hashiwokakero logic puzzles, Hashi is a game where players are constructing bridges between islands. Each island will have a number, and your goal is to try and make the number match the number of bridges that connect to it.
Everyone starts with a board and their neighbour writes a number on a single island, then play commences. In each round, a card is flipped giving everyone a number (to write on an island) and a number of bridges (to draw between islands). The boards have dotted lines to show where bridges can be drawn, but crucially each island connection can have one or two bridges drawn along it. At the moment the number on an island matches the number of bridges that connect to it, you draw a circle around the island: it’s now finished, and can’t have any more bridges.
A finished island is worth 2 points at the end of the game, but there are other ways to score as well. Some islands have flags on, and you may only put a number in a flagged island if it already has at least one bridge. If you complete all the flagged islands of a colour, you get a bonus (and being first to do so is more rewarding). Being first to connect six finished (ie circled) islands also gets a bonus. So in essence you’re trying to hit as many of these bonuses as possible, ideally before anyone else, to maximise your score.
Crucially, however, links between islands overlap. So if you’ve drawn in a north/south bridge somewhere, for instance, then the potential east-west connection it crosses is now cut off, meaning your options are always running out… If you can no longer draw in any bridges because doing so would ‘break’ an island, then you ignore bridges and just write in numbers. As soon as the card runs out, the game ends and points are tallied, with the highest winning the game.
None - players are busy with their own boards, and the only interaction is indirect: who gets the bigger bonuses for completing an objective first
All players play at the same time, but Hashi is a game that invites (and is probably best with) a little thought.
The rules are very light: essentially, you're numbering islands and trying to make sure the amount of connected bridges match. But the implementing of this gives you a series of tricky choices
Hashi won't change much as an experience, but the cards are always randomly drawn, your boards have a random starting position and together that's enough to prevent the game ever feeling 'solved'.
1-4
Players
8+
Years
15-30
Mins
Sam says
I like what Hashi does. It's an unapologetically heads-down puzzley game, and if it lasted an hour I'd be less enamoured. But as each game takes about 20 minutes, it feels nicely pitched, and does this agonising options-running-out thing really well, scratching that particular itch in relatively breezy play-time.