Wouter & Ymke 
The Kuroshio Current carries warm water north through the western Pacific, along Taiwan and Japan. It attracts large schools of fish, followed by bigger predators, whales and fishing boats hoping to find a valuable catch. In Kuroshio, we add sea cards to the table, sail through fish schools and try to reach useful fishing grounds before another player gets there first.
The ocean keeps changing as new cards are placed, while the supply of catch tokens slowly disappears. Even when you find a strong route, the fish you’re after may already be gone. There may always be more fish in the sea, but apparently not always the right numbered token.
👥 1-4 players, ages 12+
⌛ Playing time: 10-15 minutes
📝 Designer: Icerain Lin
🎨 Artwork: Mr.Berryhead
🏢 Publisher: Taiwan Boardgame Design (review copy provided)
Gameplay overview
The game starts with two starting cards in the centre and a layout of face-down sea cards around them. Each player receives one card, a boat and three sardine tokens. On your turn, you place the card from your hand over a face-down card, making sure it connects to the existing routes, and then take the covered card into your hand.
After placing the card, you sail your boat along the white routes. Your first journey begins from the southern side of the starting cards, while later journeys start wherever your boat ended its previous move. You must stop at an empty fishing ground or market, and you can’t pass through empty fishing grounds or markets along the way. You also can’t cross the same fish school or special sea area twice during one move, or return to where you started.
You may sail through another player’s boat, but you have to pay them one sardine, catch or whale token. The fish school underneath that boat doesn’t count towards your catch, so a boat can make a useful path less rewarding without blocking it completely. It’s a small rule, but it affects where you want to leave your boat. Even the open ocean needs traffic rules.
When you reach a fishing ground, you count the matching fish schools crossed along your route, including the fishing ground itself. You then take an available token of that species with the same value or a lower one and flip it to its fish side. If no suitable token remains, you receive nothing, so it pays to watch what other players are collecting. A wild fishing ground lets you choose one species crossed during that journey.
Markets let you turn fish-side tokens back to their numbered sides. At a normal market, you sell all catches of one colour, while a special market lets you sell all catches showing the same number, regardless of colour. You can also use a special market to buy sardines. Selling gives you fixed points, but catches left on their fish sides can still help with sets and species majorities, so selling immediately isn’t always the best choice.
Passing through one or more discard seas lets you remove one of the southernmost face-up cards. Any boat on that card returns to its starting position, while a whale token goes back to the supply. Passing through one or more whale seas gives you one whale token, which can later be placed on an empty fishing ground before you move. One side closes that ground, while the other changes it into a wild one. The game ends when the final face-down card is taken, after which everyone receives one last turn. Numbered tokens score their printed value, fish-side tokens score in sets, and the player with the most of each species receives the remaining tokens of that colour.
Artwork, components and visual design
The sea cards use bright blue backgrounds, white routes and simple coloured symbols for the different fish. Fishing grounds, markets and special areas are easy to recognise, although the finished network can become busy when several routes cross the same part of the table. The symbols remain readable, but finding a path may still take some careful tracing.
The wooden boats are probably our favourite components. They’re easy to spot and suit the game much better than basic pawns would have. The catch, sardine and whale tokens follow the same simple style as the cards, so everything feels consistent and easy to use. Most of the visual interest comes from watching the ocean spread across the table, which fits the game well.
Our experience
At first, we expected Kuroshio to be a fairly light game. The box is small, the turn structure sounds straightforward and the playing time isn’t long. Place a card, take a card, move a boat and resolve a location. Easy enough, or so we thought. During our first game, we quickly started spending more time on each placement than expected because one card could affect several things at once.
A card might improve the journey we wanted to make, but it also decided which card we would hold next and sometimes opened a much better option for someone else. We had several turns where the obvious placement stopped looking obvious after checking the surrounding connections. That uncertainty around card placement was where Kuroshio became more interesting than we first expected. You’re not only thinking about where a card fits, but also about the route it creates now, the card it leaves in your hand and what another player may be able to do with the new connection.
The movement was the part we enjoyed most. Reaching a fishing ground isn’t enough on its own, since you want to approach it through as many matching fish schools as possible. A destination that looks uninteresting can become very useful because of the path leading towards it, while an attractive fishing ground may offer very little from the wrong direction. The fish aren’t going to count themselves. When we managed to cross three or four matching fish schools and still reach the right fishing ground before someone else took the token, the planning felt worthwhile.
Most of our interaction came from competing for destinations, useful connections and catch tokens. Passing another boat also mattered more than we first expected, since the payment and ignored fish school could reduce the value of an otherwise good journey. Nobody was attacking anyone directly, but we were still watching what everyone else was doing throughout the game.
We found three players the most comfortable. There was enough competition, but we could still make some plans between turns. With four, the map changed more before play came back around, and checking every possible route sometimes slowed the game down. Two players felt quite different because of the shared boats, and we liked having to consider which choices we were leaving for the other person. The solo mode worked well as a score challenge and helped us learn the system, though it felt more like practising the puzzle than replacing a multiplayer session.
Our thoughts
For us, Kuroshio works better as a game about routes and timing than as a game about managing a real fishing fleet. The theme explains the actions well, but most of our attention went towards comparing paths, and deciding what to sell. That isn’t a problem, but players looking for a strong feeling of running a fishing business may find it more abstract than expected.
The scoring gives you several things to balance. Selling catches turns them into fixed points, while leaving them on their fish sides keeps them available for sets and species majorities. Focusing on one species can give you a strong majority, but it also leaves you depending on the right tokens still being available. Collecting a wider range of fish helps with sets, though it may mean giving up some of the higher-value catches. The best turns were those where one journey gave us a useful catch, improved a species majority and left the boat near a market for later.
Scoring was the part we found least easy to judge while playing. The remaining catch tokens can change the result by a fair amount, so someone who appears slightly behind may gain several points during the final count. Some groups will enjoy not knowing the winner until everything has been added up. We would’ve preferred a slightly clearer idea of where everyone stood, although the uncertainty kept everyone involved until the end.
We’re not sure Kuroshio will feel completely different after many plays, since the main problem remains the same even when the card layout changes. Its replay value comes more from becoming better at reading the map, judging when to sell and reacting to the other players than from major changes between sessions. The single-card hand also keeps you adapting, though it can leave you with a placement that feels more forced than planned. Players who enjoy learning the route system and becoming better at spotting useful connections may still find plenty of reason to return.
By the end of our games, the route building had left a stronger impression on us than the fishing theme. Kuroshio will probably suit players who enjoy tracing several possible paths, watching what tokens others are collecting and changing direction when the route they wanted is no longer there. It isn’t the easiest game to read at a glance, and some turns may take longer than expected, but crossing exactly the right fish schools, reaching the fishing ground and claiming the token before anyone else still feels very good.
📝 We received a review copy of Kuroshio from Taiwan Boardgame Design.
