Tateruto
A Japan-alogue review
Spirit Summoning, Tower Building Turmoil!
Best for: Mana system and card game lovers that want a bit of a competitive challenge.
3 - 4 players
30+ minutes
13/4/2020
I very much decide I want something based on the cover. That phrase they teach you to be nice to people but actually use books as the example? Well, I'm a rebel I guess, and this cover caught my eye at Tokyo Game Market, Fall 2019, and then the tower art sealed the deal. I bought it right away, and I was NOT disappointed!
There's 3 main things going on in Tateruto; summon cute spirits to your field, gain the mana specific to that spirit, and use that mana to buy and build tower cards. Get 7 tower stories and you win!
...Which sounds simple enough, but the amount of plotting and predicting you have to do to make sure that your mana doesn't get stolen or lost before you buy your next card takes this from a cute card game to a competitive and fleshed out mini-strategy game. Do you steal mana from your opponent this round and risk their wrath? Or do you play the cutest ghost card ever and save up some mana and hope no one comes for you? The mana pool is limited to just 5 of each color, so you have to plan really well.
The more the merrier in this game, so if you can play with 4 or 5 people, I definitely recommend it. Sometimes you can end up wailing on one person a little bit, so having more people helps balance this out. It does raise the difficulty because the mana pool doesn't get any bigger, though! However, adding players doesn't draw the game out too long, which I very much appreciate.
The thing I really enjoy about this game is the way the tower cards stack. Each one is perfectly designed to go on top of the other, and the different combinations make for some really gorgeous ways to win. Nothing quite like having a blue and yellow stripey tower, quite by luck!
Most tabletop games come with a bit of a background story, but if you read the final page in the rules, Tateruto has a whole page that sets the scene for the world that you're playing in. It's almost like there's a short fantasy story waiting to be played out.
A lot of indie games in Japan are starting to do this with their game worlds and characters—creating an entire online story or adding comic books that go with the game. I find that rather charming. It adds a little touch of sweetness to something that is otherwise mostly a prettily packaged mechanics system in a box, and the story in Tateruto is just enough to give you more of a connection to the Great Tateruto Spirit that you'll be playing.
The art of the game, the rainbow towers, the enticing story, and the tactile mana chips make this one of my favorite games to bring to a table. It's easy to teach, and there's beautiful, "Oooohhhh" moments when new players find a great new tactic. If you're the kind of player that loves a directly competitive system and you find some card games need a little more to them, I highly recommend Tateruto. The best thing is, there's even an English version!
Scroll down for links to buy it, and if you're interested in some fun translation trivia, keep reading.
This game was one of the most fun in terms of localisation I have ever done, for two reasons.
The story was well written and interesting (you'd be surprised at just how much writing isn't very pretty or fun to work on), and the names of the cards weren't names at all, but Japanese dialect words made to look like names by using katakana!
So immediately I have a dilemma. I can't just use normal English words, because calling a card "Thanks" or "Stop it" when the art isn't abstract graphics would be weird, and would also be ignoring the fact that the Japanese uses katakana and dialect on purpose. So what's the English equivalent of katakana?
Pfft, I have no idea! But I went with spelling things in a way that might take a reader just a second to realize it's actually a word. Some others I went with cute puns. Below are some of my favourite examples!
オーキニ (Okini) was the easiest to decide on. I'm British, so you might even call "Ta" a direct translation, given that it's a dialectal way to say thanks! But I still hope it confuses a few non-Brits :D
セコイワ (Sekoiwa) as a word means "sneaky" or "unfair." Since this card takes from the graveyard, I went with a word that means both "messed up" and "to kill", and used "Whak." I like this one.
オルダケ (Orudake) literally means "I'm just here", but it's a super cute name. I struggled with this one, and had a great pun but it was a whole phrase (Is there mushroom for me?), so I couldn't use it. But my translator colleague Sam came up with the glorious name, Shroommate, and I love it.
ゼセー (Zesei) was another that took me a while, as it means "revision" or "correction" and I couldn't quite get the right word. After a while I realized the guy on the card looks like one of those big buff guys that you'd give a cute nickname to, and suddenly Robin seemed perfect. The card effect is basically Robin hood, since he robs the tower-rich, and he looks a little like a hench Christopher Robin.
カエヨヤ (Kaeyoya) made me happy; this is a great name. It's close to kaeru (frog) and actually means "let's exchange." I knew I had to get both meanings in there, and Swapphibian sort of appeared on my notebook, so I'm pleased with this one.
All the names were fun to work on, and I have quite a few pages of scribbles and random notes that were the result of too many thesaurus visits. I also learned I have a fun habit, since I did the same thing when localizing Five Rings—I stare into the distance and make funny faces while mouthing random words over and over. So if you ever see me blubbing silently like a fish in a cafe, come ask me what I'm translating!