Sushi Boat Review – A Great Experience from Japanime Games

Between Sushi Go, Sushi Go Party, and Sushi Roll, I have a number of sushi themed board games on my shelf at home. When Japanime Games offered me the opportunity to review Sushi Boat, I jumped and got it to the table as fast as possible. With a very simple gameplay experience, but a decent amount of depth, this is a great and beautiful title that will easily find a spot on many board game shelves.

Sushi Boat Overview

In Sushi Boat, players will be sitting at different seats around a sushi restaurant and eating different kinds of sushi served on different coloured plates. The wooden sushi boat board, which is of the highest quality, serves as the place where sushi plates are both added to the board, and taken away. You can see this a bit more in the unboxing video below.

How to Play Sushi Boat

Points are scored in Sushi Boat in 4 different ways. 1) You earn points for the number of the same coloured plates in a row, minus 1; 2) You earn points for sets of different kinds of sushi; 3) You earn 5 points if you played the most side dish cards, and 2 points if you played the second most; and 4) you earn one point per wasabi cube on your board at the end of the game.

The trick to Sushi Boat is remembering which sushi you have picked up throughout the game. Unless you get a specific card from the side dish card pile (which you can purchase the top discarded card once per turn for 1 yen), you are NOT allowed to look at the plates stacked on your player board.

You will be able to see the colour of the plates, but not the type of sushi on the plate. Manipulating your stack of plates can be key to victory, so knowing when to purchase side dish cards, and when to use them, is a huge strategic decision.

As the game continues, new plates of sushi are added to the sushi board from a blind bag. As new plates are pushed onto the sushi boat, other pieces may fall off into the ‘trash.’ These can be picked up if you have the right card, so keeping your eyes on the trash is important.

Finally, there are also a number of different servers around the restaurant that can provide you additional bonuses, some of which will allow you to pick up two plates of sushi in one turn!

Final Thoughts on Sushi Boat

Sushi Boat just released, and I’m already hooked on the experience. Despite not being very good at the game, I still enjoy playing this with my wife and kids. My 8 year old son Lochlan has no issue playing this game, and has in fact beat me!

There is a lot of memory required to play well, so if that isn’t your thing, perhaps it’s best to pass on this experience. But if you enjoy that type of game, or love the idea of pushing plates through a sushi boat, Sushi Boat is a game you might want to check out!

Thank you to Japanime Games for providing us a copy of this for review!