Explore the island of Shikoku and make the most out of its tourism, trade, and artistic landscapes as you manage a pilgrim, a merchant, and an artist on their journeys.

Tokaido Duo is a standalone two-player game inspired by Tokaido. On your turn, you roll all three dice. Each die is associated with one of the three characters you control. You select one die and resolve it, the other player selects another die to resolve, and then you take the third and final die and resolve it. Each die moves its associated character, with each character moving in different ways. The pilgrim moves clockwise around the board the number of spaces indicated on the die. He can visit temples and gardens, and also gain coins at towns. At the end of the game, players will earn points for their pilgrims based on the number of temples they visited multiplied by the number of gardens. Pilgrims can also visit hot springs to gain a tile that can be spent to activate a die twice, and the seashore to select a power-up for a character.

Merchants move along the trade routes marked on the board. When your merchant ends on one of the towns in the center of the board, you draw a certain number of goods tokens from the bag. You can sell sets of specific goods in different towns around the edges of the board. Each time you have 10 coins, you trade them in for one gold slab. Merchants score points based on the number of gold slabs they collect.

Finally, the artist moves around the zones of the board. Once the artist moves, you flip over as many of his face-down painting tiles as there are other characters in that zone of the board. Painting tiles are revealed from left to right, and different zones have different symbols. If the zone your artist moves to has a symbol matching the leftmost revealed painting tile on your artist’s board, you gift the painting and remove it from your board, revealing a point value underneath. Artists score points for the highest point value revealed on their boards at the end.

In this game, controlling three characters means you constantly have to split your focus. Each character can trigger the endgame, and each character can potentially score 40-45 points. You have to keep in mind which dice you are allowing your opponent to choose from, and it’s interesting to see the different ways the characters play out and also complement each other. The art is lovely, and Tokaido Duo is much more than just a retread of the original. It is its own game and a great two-player experience.