Castle Nightingale is a two-person asymmetrical strategy game. One player has three feline ninjas they’ll use to infiltrate the palace and steal five of six hidden treasures. The other player is a red panda samurai who hunts the sneaky ninja and attempts to close all the secret passages into the castle.
The ninja player marks a path using footprint tokens, showing where they are moving through the castle. The floor of the castle is divided into colored zones. Before the ninja players moves their piece, the samurai player decides which color floors are squeaky. If the ninja player places the footprints on a square of the color that the samurai has decided are squeaky, the ninja player stops and places a ninja mini on the spot where they were stopped.
If the samurai player either hops into the same zone as the ninja’s mini or closes all the secrete passages, the ninja mini is captured. However, the ninja player has three figures; the samurai will need to capture the other two ninja before the ninja manage to make off with five of the six treasures hidden in the vases of the castle in order to win the game. The ninja player wins if they manage to capture five treasures.
Castle Nightingale is a game of deduction and movement. The samurai player tries to box in the ninja, forcing them to move onto a square that is squeaky. The ninja player does their best to investigate all the vases without getting boxed in by the samurai player. The exact choices of movement and other actions are dictated by a deck of cards, one for the ninja and the other for the samurai, and before the turn starts, each player picks a card from their hand to decide what moves they will make this round. The ninja player reveals their card first and takes the actions on the card, and then the samurai player reveals their card and takes the actions listed. Each player is trying to guess where their opponent will go next, making Castle Nightingale a tense game of deduction and bluffing.
A game of Castle Nightingale generally takes less than a half-hour to play, which means you can get in a few games and still have time left over for other one-on-one or cooperative games in an evening. This is a great game for players who enjoy building a strategy based on what you think the other player will do, and the cute ninja cats and red panda samurai give the game a playful air that keeps things light and fun. If you’re looking to pit sneakiness against vigilance, talk to the treasure curators at your local Dragon’s Lair Comics & Fantasy® today about adding Castle Nightingale to your collection.
