Yonkai no Yokai

About this board game

Yonkai no Yokai is a climbing and shedding card game for 3–4 players, with play lasting around 45 minutes. Set in a strange Tokyo hotel, it combines an eerie elevator ride with a distinctive system of matching sets, changing values, and carefully timed reversals.

Your journey begins when the elevator opens on the second floor, or nikai. It rises to the third floor, sankai, and then the fourth, yonkai—where the unsettling word “Yokai” seems to emerge. As the hotel’s atmosphere grows stranger, the card play challenges you to manage both the number and value of cards in your sets.

Only cards showing the same value may be played together. To increase the number of cards in a set, you must decrease the value of those cards, creating a progression that rewards attention to how your options change. This central rule gives every play a clear constraint while making the relationship between quantity and value essential.

• Players: 3–4
• Play time: approximately 45 minutes
• Core format: climbing and shedding
• Card rule: only sets of the same value may be played

Once a set reaches four cards, the direction changes. You can then begin reducing the number of cards in that set by increasing their value, turning the game’s earlier pattern on its head. Yonkai no Yokai asks players to recognize when to build and when to shed within its unusual numerical structure.

Released in 2025, Yonkai no Yokai pairs a compact hotel-horror premise with a focused card-game puzzle. For groups of three or four, it offers a 45-minute challenge built around matching values, shifting card counts, and the moment when a set of four unlocks the reverse progression.