Yōkaï no Mori

About this board game

Yōkaï no Mori is a two-player Shōgi introduction for games of about 15 minutes. It offers two streamlined formats that teach important Shōgi ideas, including promotion, effective general movement, and capturing pieces for later drops.

In the classic version, each player commands four pieces on a compact 3×4 board: a kodama, tanuki, kitsune, and koropokkuru. Victory comes by capturing the opposing koropokkuru or moving your own koropokkuru to the far side of the board.

• The tanuki moves one space orthogonally, while the kitsune moves one space diagonally.
• The kodama moves like a Shōgi pawn and can promote to a kodama samurai, which moves like a gold general.
• The koropokkuru moves like a chess king and can win through promotion if that move does not leave it in check.
• Captured pieces can be dropped back onto the board, including a kodama for mate or multiple kodama in one column.

The expert version expands the play area to 5×6 and gives each player eight pieces: three kodama, two oni, two kirin, and one koropokkuru. Here, the kirin moves like a gold general, while the oni moves like a silver general and can promote to a super oni with gold-general movement.

This larger format adds further rules from full Shōgi. Players win only by capturing the opposing koropokkuru; they cannot place two of their own kodama in the same column or drop a kodama for mate. Yōkaï no Mori uses these focused rules to introduce the tactical possibilities of successive piece drops and the importance of pawn promotion.