Designer Saashi typically releases a new title through the Saashi & Saashi brand at each Game Market event in the Tokyo area — that is, two new titles annually — and with Game Market Spring 2026 taking place on May 23-24, he and artist Takako Takarai are putting the finishing touches on Railway Porters, a dice-placement game in which 2-4 players try to get all the luggage they're handling to the proper destinations.
Which destinations are the proper ones? Well, that's where the dice come into play.
A game of Railway Porters lasts five rounds, with each round taking place in a different location represented by a game board, and with each player having their own game boards and six luggage dice.
Each turn in a round, the head porter rolls the two larger dispatch dice, re-rolling if necessary so that two colors show, then all players roll their available luggage dice. Each player chooses a dispatch die, then places luggage in the same color in the proper location(s) on their game board — but you can place only as many pieces of luggage as the number of hands showing on the dispatch die you choose. Any extra luggage must remain behind.
A luggage die showing black luggage always matches the color of the dispatch die you choose, so you must place it on your game board if not all hands on the dispatch die are full, so to speak. Similarly, if you choose the black luggage face on the dispatch die, you place one luggage die in the color of your choice on the matching space on the game board.
If you run out of space for a color, place them in the lower-right corner of your game board, and if you can't place any luggage on a turn, place one die in the "failure" zone at the bottom left.
After each turn, the head porter asks each player in turn whether they're "heading home" from work or continuing. (If you have failed twice or have no available dice, you must head home, with your head held high in only one of those situations.) When you head home, you score your game board, then pass any available dice still in hand to remaining players one by one.
Each game board scores differently. The A board above is the most basic:
- a 10 point tip for each color you've delivered (with black counting as the color on which it's located)
- a 20-60 point tip if a space with that number in a circle has luggage on it (with rows on the A board being filled left to right)
- a 30 point "completion bonus" if you had no available dice when you head home, or a 10 point "safe bonus" if you leave luggage behind when you head home (as ideally you passed those bags to another porter)
If you fail once, you can't receive a completion or safe bonus, and if you fail twice, your tip sum is halved.
Other boards introduce complications and different scoring methods: one has elevators that score based on the number of dice in that vertical column; another has the colored spaces scattered across the conveyor belts, with you scoring a bonus for certain spaces only if all spaces to the left are filled; still another has diagonal staircases that score when the top and bottom space are filled; and for the international port, you must place dice on both sides of a multiplier in order to cash in on a color.
With two dispatch dice, you have some control over how quickly you place your luggage. Maybe you can place only one bag at a time and pick up dice from other porters in order to fill more spaces, or perhaps you want to place them as quickly as you can to lock in a completion bonus.
Railway Porters will also be available at UK Games Expo the week after Game Market Spring 2026, as well as at SPIEL Essen 26, which takes place the week after Game Market Autumn 2026. Busy times for Saashi & Saashi, along with any other Japanese designers making those trips! Who's going to carry their luggage along the way...?
