Meeple MountainJun 15, 2026

Circadia Game Review

Hisashi Hayashi is the designer of a quick new card game called Circadia. I was initially interested because Hayashi has done some great work for the Bell household, namely in the form of Yokohama and Railway Boom, the latter of which was on my list of the top 10 games of 2025. As you may know, lots of publishers are pushing out new card games, for the reasons one might expect: this is a much cheaper way to get a game to market, and it could satisfy the needs of many types of players in an environment where players are apparently spending less on their games. Enter Circadia. There’s a theme loosely tied to Dreaming Paths, Spirit Creatures, and becoming the “Keeper of the Eternal Cycle” for the person lucky enough to win the game. The reality is that Circadia is much, much simpler than even the loose framework. Setup only takes three steps. Players manage a hand of cards (never more than eight), trying to build up sets of cards across three types of Spirit Creatures: bear, axolotl, and

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