Graduation Photo Records

User summary Graduation Photo Records (グラデュエーション・フォトレコーズ！) is a photo-placement game by the Japanese publisher TRI Fol:um -Repens-. The game was released for the Game Market 2017 Kobe in Japan. In this game, you play students about to graduate from high school. They have little time before their graduation to get ready a photo album with memories of their days as student friends. A tabletop game where your objective is to collect photos of your youth life and create your student yearbook. Gameplay itself is simple: draw a photo, and mount them on the board. Though, each player character has hidden objectives (like which kind of photo they like, or who they are in love with), and since so, their interests should have some conflicts. There are no special events in the game, but with many beautiful photos in a common Japanese school days settings, the nostalgic atmosphere should be appealing to many. Gameplay You play as one of eight character, and each character has hidden objectives. The deck of photos is like printed photos shot on film, not digital prints. Each turn, you may 'shoot a photo' (draw a photo from the deck and place it face down in front of you), 'develop/print' (turn one of your face-down photos face-up), or 'layout on board' (place your printed photo on the shared album board). The board doesn't have a grid, you may place the photo anyway you like. You may overlap any previously placed photos with just one restriction: at least one character's face must be fully visible from the underlying photos. When the 'endgame' photo is drawn (it is loaded somewhere near the bottom of the deck), you tally points based on your hidden objectives. The gameplay itself has low language dependencies, but the 8 student ID cards (with the face of the character and their hidden objectives) have Japanese on them. The photo itself has some handwritten Japanese scribbles with their character names, and some objectives refer to the other characters by these names ("4pts: have 2 or more photos with Miki at the end"). Therefore, if you cannot read JP letters well, you might struggle to properly recognise the names as they are presented. So the game needs a little more than a crib-sheet or memory, you need to be able to spot these names easily. Publisher summary 写真を撮影、現像して 隠した想いを達成しつつ あなた達だけの卒業アルバムを作るボードゲーム ～写真を重ねて創り出す、あなた達だけの卒業アルバム～ ■簡単な概要！ ①写真を撮影、 ②現像して、 ③アルバムを編集していく ――というボードゲームです。 各プレイヤーごとに秘めた思惑を達成しつつ、 素敵な卒業アルバムを仕上げましょう！ 青春が描かれた写真カードを集めて、思い出の卒業アルバムを作成するボードゲーム。 システムとしては、写真を引いてアルバム台紙に置いていくだけのシンプルな物。 ただ、それぞれが隠し持った点数目標(写真の好みや意中の相手によって差別化されている)に向かって利害関係を作っている。 特別なイベントは無いが、日本の学生が思わず「懐かしい」と思えるような透明感のあるイラストとノスタルジックな世界観が魅力的。