Shinobi Spy & Supply

Shinobi Spy & Supply is a small card game about 2 competing shops that sell all the gear Fantasy Japanese spies need for espionage! However, when your clientele are Ninja, there’s literally spies around every corner. Will your shop be the most successful?

Shinobi Spy & Supply started as an “18 card ninja-themed game” challenge in our local gaming group, and grew into a unique dueling game featuring double sided and multi-use cards, cool Japanese animals, and historical clothing from Edo period Ukiyo-e prints.

What are Shinobi?

Shinobi are Ninja! Both terms refer to Japanese masters of espionage and sabotage, particularly during the Sengoku Period. For more info on the history featured in the game, see the sources section at the bottom of the Kickstarter page, and check out our Free Digital Artbook!

Draw cards:

Draw cards from the center market. Only cards with the characters facing you can be drawn! 

The center draw pile rotates through the game, so it will face different players at different moments, opening up new opportunities throughout.

Serve Shinobi Clientele:

Discard cards matching the cost requirement of a Shinobi to "Serve" them their goods and add their card to the table in front of you. 

They'll provide points based on the resources in the top left corner of all of your Shinobi at game end.

Don't forget to activate the Shinobi Customer's Bonus Action after serving them:

Keep an eye out for the special "Assassinate" Bonus action. It allows you to remove an opponent's spy! 

Spy on your opponent’s shop:

Take a card from the market with the character facing towards your opponent, flip it over, and tuck it under one of their shop cards. 

Then, rotate the center draw pile towards you:

This provides you two main benefits: 

1. Extra end game scoring based on the resources your opponent's earn.
2. A resource discount when serving customers! 

Resource Discount example:

Score points:

Shinobi Spy & Supply is a double-tableau builder. You don't just score points on your own cards, but also your opponents (based on your spies)!

Score points both based on the customers you've served, and on the spies you sent to your opponent.

Total points won in this example: 25!  

How many points did our opponent get? (answer in FAQ!)

See the Videos section for an in-depth look at how to play, a video playthrough, and the solo mode!

Check out other Micro May projects Here! 

Check out Cryptid Creek Here: https://www.seedstage.vn/projects/mayhemdelight/cryptid-creek-build-a-legend

Check out Flock 'N' Squabble Here: https://www.seedstage.vn/projects/tholen/flock-and-squabble

About Us:

Jered Byford and Leslie Kolke are a husband-wife game design team who run Orca Island Games! Each brings different skillsets to the board game table, which help them work together to design and develop games. Jered’s hobbies include Jazz trombone, while Leslie plays with any art material she can get her hands on. They both love hiking and being outdoors, and their cat Kiki.
 

Our favorite part of the game:

More reviews coming soon!

How to Play Video:

Full Game Play through Video:

In solo mode, a simple AI takes the reins of your opponent's shop. Can you beat them to prove yourself the most skilled shop owner on all 4 difficulty modes? 

Solo Game Playthrough Video

Coming Soon!

Shipping Costs do NOT include Sales Taxes or VAT. Sales taxes will be charged in the Backerkit Pledge Manager Post-campaign, and VAT will be charged by the courier upon import to your country.

Shipping will be charged Post-campaign in Backerkit Pledge Manager, approximately 1 month before the games arrive! Prices are subject to change, and reflect current high prices due to high oil costs. If prices lower, that would be awesome and I will let you know in a Kickstarter update.

International Shipping Price and VAT Transparency:

VATs will be paid by you upon receiving the game in the mail. This may change (due to considering new fulfillment options), and I will keep you all updated in the KS updates.

I usually ship games directly from here, but due to high international shipping prices I'm looking at other options for fulfillment. 

I know the global shipping prices are ridiculous right now, and it's due to global factors outside of my control. I will do what I can to reduce international shipping costs before the game ships, but I can't promise that. If you want to reduce the costs further, I recommend reaching out to your local game store or finding folks to do a group buy with you. Please reach out if you have any questions regarding shipping!

Please note that the Deluxe boxes, Art prints, and add-ons with Symptomatic will not be eligible for any new fulfillment options I'm considering, as they have to be shipped from here. Any international fulfillment adjustments will only be for orders containing just Shinobi Spy & Supply.

We are proud that no generative AI was used in any part of the art, design, writing, marketing, or any other aspect of the game.

We'd like to thank our family and friends for their unwavering support, our local game design group (Split Perspective Studios) for their help with playtesting and development, Protospiel MN attendees for playtesting, the Micro May group for campaign support, and the backers of our previous campaign for helping us get this far.

The art for Shinobi Spy & Supply is created by the game designer Leslie, and the outfits and backgrounds are pulled directly from Historical Edo Period Ukiyo-e prints. I'll be sharing the process in detail in the Kickstarter updates, and the full art blog will be released as a digital artbook included with every pledge (or for free if you message me on Kickstarter!).
 

Notes on the Art Process:

Why are the Ninja not featured in all-black clothing?

All-black clothing is a more modern addition to the Ninja Legend (Turnbull, page 5). Because often Shinobi were used for information gathering, it was important that they blended into whatever roles they were copying in order to spy. The outfits and costumes for Shinobi Spy & Supply are pulled from Ukiyo-e prints from the 1600-1800s, including the artwork from the masters of Utagawa Hiroshige, Katsushika Hokusai, and Utagawa Kunisada.  Follow along as I post art and design blogs throughout the process to get an inside look at each piece, and the history behind them! 

Why do you alternate verbiage between Ninja and Shinobi? 

After doing my best to study and be as informed as I can on the topic, I think both are accurate ways to refer to the same traditional Japanese masters of espionage. My personal preference is Shinobi no mono, as the word “Ninja” didn’t appear until 1955 (Turnbull, page 7), but modern scholars will use either or both terms to refer to Shinobi no mono/Ninja, so I will as well.

So were the Ninja even real then, anyway?

I am not a scholar on the topic, but my personal opinion is that the Ninja were real, even if their legends and tales have been exaggerated over time. A historical Ninja may not have looked or acted the way we think of them in pop culture and the media (Turnbull, page 4), which is why I depicted them in a variety of “normal” clothes. That doesn’t make them any less cool!

Why did you use Edo period Ukiyo-e for inspiration instead of earlier historical attire?

Because the Edo period was a more peaceful time than the Sengoku period, arts and culture were able to be a higher priority. There’s so much more art available from the later - yet still hundreds of years ago - time period, and it is of a higher detail as Ukiyo-e printmaking techniques reached their historical peak. Plus, selfishly, It gave me, the artist, a chance to study the masters of Ukiyo-e and delve deeper than I could in my college studies of 19th century art history.

Why Animals?

I wanted to feature both iconic and lesser known animals in Japan. The game gives me a chance to display how cool some of these creatures are. Because Japan is a chain of islands, they have many animals that are endemic and endangered.

Why is the Digital Artbook Free?

We want to share what we learned about shinobi no mono and Ukiyo-e master artists with as many folks as possible, so we're giving the digital artbook away for free! If you just want the artbook and nothing else from the campaign, message me through KS.

Sources about Shinobi, Ukiyo-e, and beyond. Check these out to learn more!

Books:

Turnbull, Stephen. Ninja: Unmasking the Myth. Pen and Sword/Frontline Books, 2017.

Fujibayashi, Yasutake, et al. The Book of Ninja: The First Complete Translation of the Bansenshukai, Japan’s Premier Ninja Manual. Watkins Publishing, 2013.

Dalby, Liza Crihfield. Kimono: Fashioning Culture. University of Washington Press, 2001.

Roberts, Laurance P. A Dictionary of Japanese Artists: Painting, Sculpture, Ceramics, Prints, Lacquer. Weatherhill, 1977.

Websites:

Resig, John. “Japanese Print Search and Database.” Japanese Print Search and Database, Dec. 2012, ukiyo-e.org/.

Aragorô, Shôriya. “Kabuki 21.” KABUKI 21: All about Japan’s Traditional Theatre Art of Kabuki!, 9 Sept. 1999, www.kabuki21.com/.

Miller, Max. “ This Recipe Took 3 Years... Ninja Kikatsugan.” Tasting History, YouTube, 23 Sept. 2025, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVhxaJZG37I.