Ascending Koi is a game for 2 to 5 players and takes between 30 and 60 minutes to play (about 10 minutes per player). It takes about 3 minutes to learn to play.

In Ascending Koi you are one of the many elemental koi in a Chinese garden on a transcendental journey of self discovery through the seasons from a fry to a dragon.

Introduction

In spring, you place modular tiles to create paths that you travel along to gain food resources.

By spending your resources you learn unique elemental personality traits specific for your koi which are inturn used to add to the actions you take during your turn.

When you encounter another koi on the same tile, you may trade places with each other

In summer, the pond stops growing. You invest your food resources into higher states through color blending to earn advanced traits, and plan for the coming autumnal rains by drawing pond tiles for the next season.

In autumn, you reshape your world by placing autumn pond tiles on top of the spring tiles. This creates new paths and opportunities for your koi.

And in winter you prove yourself as the pond begins to freeze and your traits become fully actualized, until finally you become enlightened and race to the lotus tile to win by ascending as a dragon!

Objective

You play Ascending Koi in seasons, turns and actions where you move your koi along paths that you create by laying and manipulating pond tiles.

Along your transcendental journey, you face hardship and fortune that either results in gaining and exchanging food tokens. By exchanging food tokens using basic color theory and matching, you learn unique talents that help you on your journey.

When your koi learns all its talents, your enlightened koi must race back to its birthplace to win the game.

How to win

You win by unlocking all your traits and moving to the lotus tile.

In the box

• 1 Rulebook
• 8 Koi pawns
• 8 Koi cards
• 32 Generation tokens
• 46 Pond tiles
• 72 Food tokens
• 56 Trait cards

Replayability

• Ascending Koi has eight different koi to master: wood, fire, earth, metal, water, sun, moon, and rainbow.
• Once you have mastered the game, draft Rainbow traits to vary your Koi's abilities
• Koi Generations enables legacy play where your Koi's personality evolves through multiple play throughs
• You build the pond together using modular tiles with different combinations of koi and traits

Mechanics

• Abstract strategy
• Tile placement
• Route building
• Point-to-point movement
• Color blending
• Ability acquisition
• Hand management

Available on Tabletop Simulator and Tabletop Playground!

Ascending Koi in 15 seconds

Ascending Koi in 60 seconds

Learn to Play in 3 minutes