Gameplay

In Dokitto! Ice you try and win ice cream scoops over multiple rounds. You get a hand of cards and then compete over multiple rounds (tricks) and see who played the winning card. One person plays the first card (leads), the others must follow with a card in the same color—if possible.

If everyone was able to play the same color, the highest card wins. The card colors are ice cream flavors, and you now can take an ice cream token for this flavor and add it to your cone. Every token is a point, unless you randomly get the token with the topping, which is an additional point.

But (and here comes the twist), if anyone is not able to follow the played color (suit), then the lowest card of all played cards, regardless of suit, wins the trick. The winner can now choose any of the ice cream tokens, no matter what flavor. This has two major advantages: You can pick the best flavor (obviously vanilla), but also a flavor where you have chances of getting a topping token for an additional point.

You need to be careful though, when you win a fourth (depending on player count this could change) scoop of ice cream, you drop your waffle and the rounds end immediately. Everyone else now gets one point for every scoop as well as any toppings, and you start a new round. The game ends when someone has 10 or more points, and the person with the most points wins.

Thoughts

You could argue I own too many trick-taking games (or maybe not), but for sure I currently have too many to play them all on a regular basis. But Dokkito! Ice is one I came back to time and time again, and there is nothing I really dislike about the gameplay. It is not the flashiest one, or with the wildest tricks, and it also is not my favorite one (small spoiler for a top-10 list I am eager too do), but it is just super fun.

The game has some neat ideas that make it memorable, but it is very smooth in its execution and does not throw the kitchen sink at the idea of trick-taking.

The hand management is especially intriguing, as you need high and low cards to both win tricks as well as lose tricks, and those middle cards will betray you anyway along the way.

Appearance

You are a person who likes to eat a lot, and you want to show of this specific skill to your friends. Of course you do this by eating the most ice cream. So far, so good, but the shop owner allows only orders with up to three scoops—if you order more, your order is cancelled.

The artwork matches the silly theme, and is colorful and cutesy. There are only five characters, and the representation is fine, but having the person of color being depicted on chocolate is reproducing racist stereotypes and an unnecessary oversight (as a best case).

To be honest, I never thought about this before writing this review, which makes me pretty grateful for every reviewer or bgg user who calls out issues like that in games. I am pretty keen to see how continuing this journey of writing content about games will change how I view them.

The components are solid, and putting together your ice cream and adding the scoops and toppings is really fun.

Accessibility

If the players are already familiar with trick-taking, I found the teach of this game a breeze. On the other hand, it is also a really great game to teach trick-taking to people without any particular experience, because the twists are so subtle and the theme is such a great help in teaching the game. With teach, the playtime is usually below 30 minutes.

The setup is super quick. I can’t really talk about the rules, because they are only in Japanese and I worked with an overview that someone provided to Board Game Geek.

The colors are distinctive from each other, and the card numbers are depicted both in the top left and right corners.

Considerations

I played this game at three, four, and five people, and while it was fun at every player count, I usually play this at three. Because I played the other player counts so little I can not really say if that they are considerably weaker, but I think the game is just great at three. This leads to it being played regularly at this count, and when we are four or more we play trick-takers that are not as well suited to three players (because they don’t get played as much, because the plays are divided through more different games).

Dokitto! Ice is a rarer game and probably not available in retail anymore, but because it is not that highly rated there are some used copies available for a pretty fair price, mostly around 20 euros / dollars.