Adorable hiking-themed deck builder announced by Japanese indie dev 

Japanese indie developer KPC officially announced the deckbuilding hiking game Yamafuda! Summit on January 13. The title is planned for release for the PC (Steam) in 2024. 

Yamafuda! Summit is the latest entry to the Yamafuda! series of mountain-climbing roguelike card games. The game’s development was first revealed in December last year, along with a demo release on Comiket 103. On January 13, the game’s Steam store page was opened along with an official announcement by the developer. In Yamafuda! Summit, the protagonist Koharu Takaraka decides to climb some faraway mountains during her holiday. She meets up with her best friend Hiyori Hoshikawa and they start off on their hiking adventure together.  

The gameplay is turn-based, and you use cards to climb the mountains. For each mountain you climb, you get to choose a new card. Along the way, you will be confronted by various mountain climbing challenges that drain your stamina. But the twist is that they’re personified as cute characters. You can defend yourself and get past them using cards, as well as create hiking gear to help you progress. Yamafuda! Summit will contain over 50 cards, over 50 types of gear and more than 10 different mountains. 

Koharu and Hiyori will function like a party, with either Koharu or Hiyori being the leader. They both have separate stamina gauges, but Hiyori seems to use batteries for “high-efficiency hiking,” which come with an additional battery life bar.  

It seems that the game has a third main character, who can be seen in the game’s title image  on the Steam store page. Perhaps the yellow-clad blonde character will  be joining Koharu and Hiyori as a hiking companion, although the number of party members seems to be limited to 2 characters. 

Yamafuda! Summit, with its adorable graphics and characters, is under development and planned for release by the end of 2024 for the PC (Steam).  

Written by. Amber V based on the original Japanese article (original article’s publication date: 2024-01-13 13:55 JST)