Kanji Attack!

I started coming up with a print-on-demand to sell on The Game Crafter, and was writing down a few ideas.

One of them was a game with "runes," where players would play combinations of them with progressively better effects. It started to get a little unwieldly with the number of combinations I was coming up with.

That wasn't so much the pain in the butt. The real problem was coming up with the aforementioned runes. I would have to create them, draw them, scan them, clean them up, scale them . . . then repeat until I got everything I needed.

I was doing a project at work where I would put some kanji on my desk so that visitors could have something interesting to look at what they were waiting for someone in my department, when I eventually got an idea: "Hey! Instead of runes, why don't I just use kanji? They're already made, look like runes, already have meanings, and all I have to do is type them into the graphics software I'm using."

That's how Kanji Attack! was born.

Kanji Attack! is part combat card game, and part educational tool. Progressing through turns, each player plays matching kanji cards for a number of different effects, and the more copies you play, the better the effect is. The first to reduce all their opponents' Hit Points from 20 to 0 wins.

The cards are separated into five types: Attack, Support, Reaction, Boost and Special.

• Attack cards are used to do damage to your opponent;

• Support cards usually have non-damaging effects, such as drawing cards, but can also hinder your opponent, such as by looking at their hand and stealing a card;

• Reaction cards are used when another combination is played, such as by stopping a combination or attack;

• Boost cards can be used to enhance combinations;

• and Special cards have unique effects that other cards don't have.

The full base set contains 108 cards (104 kanji cards, and 4 other cards used during the game), 80 tokens ("winks") to keep track of Hit Points, and accomodates between two and six players.   Future sets will include additional cards and rules.

It's planned for release in the second week to middle of September, and will retail for $19.99.