This is a game for one player, designed for contemplative solo play. It’s a bubbling cauldron of simple rules and writing prompts, stirred together to produce the story of a teenage witch spending a year away from home in an unfamiliar city—Koriko.
You'll use this book, a deck of tarot cards and a teetering tower of dice to explore the city, work to improve your witch's fortunes and meet some of the city’s weird and wonderful residents.
The game’s primary inspiration is Kiki’s Delivery Service, both the Studio Ghibli film and the Eiko Kadono novel. I’ve watched the film countless times as it’s one of my son’s favourites, and its story and themes have burrowed their way deep into my soul.
After backing it on Kickstarter, I've recommended this book to so many people so far because frankly... It's lovely!
Koriko is a single-player TTRPG that needs a stack of dice and a tarot deck to function. You play as your own young witch travelling to a new city for the first time making her way in the world. It's hard to review a "book" when no two people "reading" it will experience the same story. But hey, life is what you make of it, and my little life in Koriko was lovely. I can't wait to play this again soon.
Language: G (0 swears, 0 "f"); Mature Content: PG; Violence: PG This is a solo role playing game that I interpreted as a whimsical writing exercise with the same character across several prompts. The content in the guidebook is full of suggestions that are only as specific as they need to be to get your idea wheel spinning. Some of the prompts include hints of consequences, crime, conflict, and loss that readers/writers could interpret as more than PG, but nothing in the text itself is more than what is appropriate for the reflective and light-hearted coming-of-age story it is intended to be.