Hokito

About this board game

Hokito is a two-player strategy game played in about 20 minutes, where players build valuable towers by combining their own pieces and dominating opposing pieces.

Each player begins with 18 pieces: six marked 1, six marked 2, and six marked 3. One player takes black pieces and the other takes white, then both players randomly spread their pieces across their own half of the 6×6 board. The black player takes the first turn.

On your turn, choose a single piece or a stack that you control. Control belongs to the player whose color is visible on top. A single piece must move onto another single piece, while a stack must move onto another stack, creating increasingly important towers as the game develops.

Movement is orthogonal and covers 1 to 3 occupied fields, with the distance determined by the number of marks on the topmost piece. During the move, the piece or stack may turn 90 degrees at an occupied field, allowing a two-step move to travel either straight or with one turn.

• Build towers from single pieces and stacks.
• Control a piece or stack through the color on top.
• Match single pieces with singles and stacks with stacks.
• Use the top piece’s marks to determine movement and scoring value.

As spaces are emptied, movement options become more limited. The game ends as soon as either player cannot move, so every move can affect both your future choices and the towers available to you.

At the end of Hokito, each player scores the pieces and stacks they control. A piece or stack is worth the number of marks on its topmost piece multiplied by the number of pieces in the stack. The player with the higher total score wins.