Ittoryu: Master Fillet

Ittoryu: Master Fillet is a fish filleting game built on real butchery. Every species has its own anatomy, its own bones and its own technique, and every stroke of your blade decides how much meat you save. CUT LIKE A CHEF Scale the fish, take the head, open the belly and clean the cavity. Run the blade over the spine, sweep the ribs, pull the pin bones and skin the fillets. Cut close to the line and the yield climbs. Stray, and the meat you wasted shows on the scorecard. REAL TECHNIQUES Western two-fillet for salmon and cod. Sanmai oroshi, the classic three-piece cut, for mackerel and sea bream. Quarter fillets for flatfish. The five-fillet Y-bone method for northern pike. Loining yellowfin tuna into toro and akami, then cutting saku blocks. Sebiraki for eel, from the back, after the meuchi spike. Honegiri for hamo, scoring through hundreds of fine bones. FIFTEEN FISH Atlantic salmon, rainbow trout, Atlantic cod, branzino, saba mackerel, king mackerel, madai sea bream, hamachi yellowtail, mahi-mahi, northern pike, flounder, Pacific halibut, unagi eel, hamo pike conger and yellowfin tuna. Each is drawn from its real markings and proportions, from easy apprentice work to the hardest cuts in the kitchen. SEVEN KNIVES Start with a humble kitchen knife and work up to a hand-forged honyaki yanagiba. The deba powers through collars, the fillet knife bends along the ribs, the sujihiki draws long clean slices through big loins. Every blade has its own sharpness, power, flex, control and edge retention, and the right knife makes a hard fish easier. KEEP YOUR EDGE Knives dull as you work. Hone mid-shift to keep cutting, and put a tired blade on the stone between shifts: a pull-through sharpener, a combination whetstone, a finishing stone or a natural stone quarried near Kyoto. Better stones bring the edge back sharper. RANKED SHIFTS Six fish, on the clock. Every shift is scored on blade accuracy, speed, yield and clean work, and your rating rises from Minarai, the apprentice, all the way to Densetsu, the legend. Your first five shifts are guided placements while you learn the lines. PRACTICE BOARD Untimed, any fish, as many reps as you like. Clear every fish on the board to unlock Roe Harvest, where you harvest osetra and beluga caviar by hand. ROE Every fish you fillet pays roe. Spend it on knives and whetstones, double a good shift, and keep a daily streak going for a free tin of caviar every tenth day. Ittoryu is single player and plays offline. Your rating is calculated on your own device from your own shifts.