Or, to refer it as it is referred to in-game: Yakpai Sentu, Orange Juice-oo (^・ω・^ )♥♥♥!

100% Orange Juice is a very Japanese game. It is full of cute anime moe-blobs with a very cute art-style and sugoi kawaii voice acting. Sorry, I’ve been playing this game a bit too much, and it is affecting my writing like a silly baka.

In a nutshell, this game is a lot like Mario Party mixed with Dokapon Journey (which itself is Monopoly but with killing). You and three soon-to-be-former friends are on a board, and you roll dice to move around. The goal is to achieve certain “normas” and returning to one of the player’s home squares. These normas are in the form of either getting stars (which can be gained or lost through combat or landing on squares) or by getting a certain number of combat wins. You can get stars passively, but they can be lost or used to fuel certain card effects, so it is not as constant as the combat.

In terms of gameplay, it is really simplistic and dice-based. But, there is a surprising level of customization and strategy before the game starts. When you start playing, you choose a character, each of which come from one of a few doujin/touhou style games. They all have different combat stats(HP, Attack, Defence and evasion) as well as a unique “Hyper” card.

Before I explain the Hyper cards, I’ll tell you about the deck building process. During a game, you can land on green squares and get a card that can be activated during combat, lain as trap or used to modify yourself. You bring cards into the battle, but instead of just using your own, they are all brought into a communal deck, along with a couple blank cards that are transformed into you Hyper if you pick them up. So, while you bring all combat oriented cards, someone else might get them while you are stuck with their pansy “let’s all be friends” cards. Hyper cards are initially blank cards, but when a character picks one up, they turn into that character’s Hyper. They all have pretty powerful effects, and all of them reference the source character to some degree. You can, however, steal another character’s card. If that card is a Hyper card, it does not change. So, you could use another character’s Hyper with enough luck and planning!

Speaking of combat, let me tell you about how combat takes place. When you land on an encounter square, or land pass by an opponent and choose to fight them, you enter combat. First, players can play a card to affect combat, usually by raising their stats. Then, the player who initiated combat gets to attack by rolling a d6 and adding their attack. This serves as the base damage, and what the defender is trying to beat. The defender gets a choice, defend and reduce damage, or evade and try to negate it all-together. The defender rolls a d6 and adds their stat based on their choice. When you defend, you reduce the damage of the attack by your defence roll, to a minimum of 1. If you evade, you take 0% or 100% of the damage, based on whether you beat the opponents roll. Then, if the defender is alive, it switches, with the defender being able to attack the initiator.

For example, let’s say that I (with 4 hp, +1 attack and +0 defence and evasion) move into a square containing an opponent (5 hp with -1 attack and defence but +1 evasion) and choose to attack. First, we both get to simultaneously play a card, but in this example we wont. Since I moved into the square, I attack and roll a 3. 3+1 = 4, so that is the outgoing damage. My opponent decides to defend and rolls a 5. 5-1 = 4, so my attack is reduced by 4, down to a minimum of 1. If they chose to evade, but rolled a 2, 2+1 = 3, they would take all 4 damage. It’s a pretty simple system, and I find it to be very rewarding to be attacked, but evade and subsequently defeat the attacker.

Oh yeah, and if you ever get your HP reduced to 0, you need to recover on your turn. You roll a die against your recover goal, which usually starts at 5. If you can beat it, you wake up. If you don’t, you stay down, but the number goes down one. It can be annoying to go down and constantly roll 1s.

The boards also play a huge part. They are set up like Mario Party boards, with branching paths to give you some control over your direction. They also have a bunch of spaces that affect you, like giving/taking stars, starting a battle, giving you a card, warping you around or checking your normas. Each board also has a unique affect that occurs every few turns. One board will warp people around every five turns, while another places a trap on a random spot every three turns.

Overall, I would definitely pick this one up. There are a few bugs (if you are in fullscreen mode, you can’t alt-tab without it crashing), but it is so much fun. The animations are super sugoi kawaii desu~!! And the music is cheerful without getting annoying. Definitely a game to play with friends/other basement dwellers.