Hi, I'm hakairyuousinn (my X account).

Kitsune Den is a game where you wander into another world at a shrine at night, then get invited to a gambling den by supernatural foxes… that sort of setting.

Everyone rolls five dice and keeps them hidden under a cup. You take turns making claims like, “There are at least six fours among all our dice.” Think someone's lying? Call “Liar!” and everyone lifts their cups. Whoever was wrong loses a tail.

Designs for Kitsune Den's three foxes: from left, the Fox Lady in a red kimono, the White Fox in white and the Little Fox in a happi coat
The foxes at the den. From left: the Fox Lady, the White Fox and the Little Fox

I made the trailer before the game

For this game, I made a trailer before I had anything playable. That was October 25.

The trailer is 56 seconds long. I went through nine versions, removing the opening overhead shot and moving a close-up of a mouth two seconds earlier, among other changes. I posted it on X on October 27.

Each fox has a tell

There are three foxes, each with a habit that shows when they lie. The White Fox twitches an ear, the Little Fox swishes its tail, and the den's host, the Fox Lady, blows smoke rings from her pipe. Spot the tell and you can catch a bluff.

I redid the art several times too. The dice cup, for example, first looked like a wooden bucket. I changed it to a palm-sized cup woven from bamboo.

A trailer scene showing the Fox Lady covering dice with a woven bamboo cup and holding a pipe
A bidding scene from the trailer. I changed the cup to woven bamboo

1,000 automated matches, a 36.2% win rate

I built the game after the trailer. One player, three foxes, five dice and three tails each. No time limit.

I made an automated player and ran 1,000 matches. It won 36.2% of them, with an average of 9.3 rounds per match. It doesn't read the foxes' tells, so a person who can read them ought to win more… but I haven't measured what happens with human players yet.

I played through to the end in Japanese and English on three screen layouts, including portrait on a phone and landscape on a PC. I fixed things like tail markers covering faces and unclear turn indicators.

I've paused work on the single-player version

I've actually stopped building out this single-player version for now. I'm considering a version to play with friends, but haven't decided whether to make it.

It was playable, though, so I put it on this site on October 31. I also fixed a mobile startup bug that left it stuck until the first tap.

▶ Play Kitsune Den (rules and tips here)