Tokyo Highway

A wobbly stacking race: build elevated highways from pillars and sticks and be first to park all your cars.

Designers: Yoshiaki Tomioka, Naotaka Shimamoto
Published by: itten
Editions by: asmodee, Happy Baobab

Tokyo Highway (the four-player version, 2018) is a dexterity-and-building race to place all your cars on the road first. To give the cars somewhere to go you have to build the roads yourselves, stacking squat gray and yellow pillars into columns of different heights and connecting them with sticks that act as highways. Pass a new highway under or over an existing one and you get to (carefully!) place a pillar or car on it. The towers wobble and the tension rises as the structure grows, and the game ends the moment someone has emptied their garage. It's a short, silly, wobbly game for ages eight and up, played in about half an hour.

Pillars and sticks build real highwaysWeave under and over for placement rightsFirst to place all cars wins

Who it's for

You want a hands-on, physical building game where the table becomes the board, and you like a little shaky tension.

Not for you if…

You have unsteady hands or limited table space, or you want a thinky strategy game. This is about careful, wobbly building.

Vibe's take

Steady-handed and giggly. Everyone leans in, holds their breath on each placement and groans together when the tower shudders.