In recent years a trickle of tiny tabletop games from Japan has been making a big splash among western gamers.

Seiji Kanai’s Love Letter, for example, packs an addictive blend of deduction, bluffing and courtly romance into just 16 cards, while Hisashi Hiyashi’s Sail to India tasks players with building settlements and developing trade routes using only a handful of components. Japanese designers have excelled at fitting a lot of gameplay into a very small package.

Machi Koro, a city-building card and dice game by designer Masao Suganuma, is the latest in this succession of miniaturised games.

Players find themselves in the shoes of a small-town mayor with big aspirations. Starting with only a wheat field and a bakery, you’ll attempt to build a thriving metropolis and become the first town to complete four major landmarks – a train station, shopping mall, amusement park and radio tower.

To do this, you’ll grow your town by purchasing new buildings, each of which presents an opportunity to raise cash for your fledgling city.

On your turn you’ll roll dice to determine which, if any, of your buildings generate revenue. Bakeries, for instance, pay you a single coin whenever you roll a two or three. A convenience store pays three coins when you roll a four. Multiple copies of the same building pay out repeatedly, so three convenience stores net you a potentially game-changing nine coins every time their number comes up.

This poses an immediate strategic question: is it better to build a city that generates a small amount of cash on any die roll, or gamble with one which gives you huge payouts, provided you’re lucky enough to roll the right number?

Other buildings offer new opportunities and complications to consider. Wheat fields and cattle ranches don’t generate huge sums, but they pay out on other players’ turns as well as your own. Mines and forests aren’t immediately all that useful, but they let you build lucrative factories later in the game. Cafes and restaurants pay nothing if you trigger them on your own turn, but if opponents activate them they’ll have to pay you for the privilege of dining in your establishments.

All of this means there are several viable approaches to building a successful city. In our group, one player built an agrarian paradise with multiple cattle ranches supplying a cheese factory. My city focussed on cafes, restaurants and a shopping mall, giving me a mental image of a consumer hell with nothing but Starbucks and Nandos as far as the eye could see.

Machi Koro is quick, light and approachable. Play-throughs rarely run over 25 minutes, and its friendly, engaging paper-cutout style artwork perfectly encapsulates the spirit of the game.

Its one main flaw is that that certain cards often seem more powerful than others, although the randomising element of the dice has some mitigating effect. It’s also decidedly not intended as a realistic depiction of urban planning – if you’re looking to scratch your Sim City itch you’d be better considering the weightier Suburbia.

But minor niggles don’t detract from Machi Koro’s considerable charm. It’s worth a space on any game shelf.