In Bitoku, players embark on a mystical journey as forest spirits, seeking transcendence to become the next great guardian spirit. To achieve this lofty goal, you'll enlist the help of yōkai, kodamas, and pilgrims who accompany you on your path. This is a complex eurogame blending hand management, engine building, and worker placement with dice, offering multiple strategies for victory.

Your yōkai cards represent the actions you can take, and the key is to use them at the right times to extract the maximum benefit from their abilities. Throughout the game, you can enhance your deck with more yōkai cards, expanding your options and boosting your score. Furthermore, you'll have three yōkai guardians, represented by dice, which can be sent to different forest regions on the main board. There, they unlock new possibilities, such as building structures, collecting soul crystals that generate resources, and much more.

The game also invites you to aid the mitamas, lost souls seeking redemption, by using the light of chinkon fireflies. There's a vast array of actions available, and the strategy deepens further in your personal domain, where you manage pilgrims – followers who, after their journeys of contemplation, share their experiences and learnings with the Bitoku spirits. Prepare for a deep and thematically rich strategic challenge!