おとぎあつめ (Otogiatsume)

The Black Hood has scattered all of the fairy tale characters! It's your job to gather them back together. In this simple but engaging game, players try to complete sets of characters from famous stories, including Little Red Riding Hood, Alice in Wonderland, Urashima and the Kingdom Beneath the Sea, and Journey to the West. Each player begins with a hand of four cards, and there is a face-down deck with two face-up cards on each side. On their turn, a player must discard a card to one of the face-up piles. They then draw from either the face-down deck or the other face-up pile. The goal is to complete one of the four-character story sets or two of the two-character story sets. The first to complete such a set wins. To add to the fun, each character is only on one card but may appear in multiple stories, and the Black Hood card acts as a wild. Advanced rules, where you must play until winning twice in a row, are also available.