DESIGNER: Adam Zwain
ARTISTS: James Churchill, Nicholas Trahan, Jon Merchant, Katherine Boils, Jason Washburn
PLAYER COUNT: 2-4
PLAYING TIME: 60-90 minutes
PLAYER AGE: 14+
Night Market invites you to become a business owner, constructing stalls to satisfy customers with diverse tastes. Played over two phases in four seasons, leverage workers and chefs during the day phase to gather foods like bubble tea, chicken steak, stinky tofu, and beef sausage using a unique tic-tac-toe pattern matching system. Lantern actions allow you to construct stalls, attract customers, or hire chefs.
In the night phase, strategically position collected foods to lure customers. Unique dishes like beef noodle soup, soup dumplings, mango shaved ice, and mochi significantly boost sales. Satiated customers return, while disappointed ones leave. Maintain customer loyalty through a spatial worker placement mechanism and resource management. Ultimately, the player with the highest reputation is crowned the best Night Market. Ready to captivate your customers and dominate the night market scene?
Photos taken by Tabletop Sauce.
RESOURCES
CONTENTS
City Board
4 Player Boards
20 District Tiles
16 Lantern Districts
108 Goods
32 Signature Dishes
36 Stalls
37 Seasonal Customers
16 Seasonal Attractions
New Taiwan Dollar Tokens
8 Loyal Customer Tokes
24 Marker Cubes
13 Seasonal Gals
4 Turn Order Lanterns
9 Delivery Trucks
4 Signature Price Tokes
First Player Marker
20 Scooters
32 Meeples
1 Scorepad
Rules
FROM THE DESIGNER
When I moved to Taiwan in 2010, it did not take long to fall in love with the night markets—the vibrant colors, the bustling alleyways, and the food. I quickly realized that the night market was a microcosm of Taiwanese culture. So, like many travelers, I made a point to visit the major night market in each city I saw to sample the regional dish that made each market “famous.” I did not realize until after a few years of living in Taiwan that night markets are ubiquitous. Every neighborhood has one. You could walk through a seemingly quiet alleyway and stumble across an absolute gem of a night market that features the city’s best beef noodles. This is what I wanted to capture in the design of this game: that the food of any small night market can easily compete with that of the major ones.
While I could not possibly include all the famous dishes Taiwan has to offer, I chose a few iconic ones mixed with my favorites. I hope this game gives you a glimpse of an aspect of Taiwanese culture that I fell in love with while living there, and more so, I hope you will be able to experience a Taiwanese night market yourself one day.
Thanks for playing!
-Adam Zwain
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Cultural Consultants: Maja Lee, Smoox Chen
Play Testers: Rufino “Ramy” Arias, Philip E. Reyes, James Tiu, Oliver Sio, Brian Suhre, Aaron Bradley, Kevin Russ, Jason Schneider