Children who go into the forest may come across some yokai, that is, supernatural creatures and phenomena. Moved by boundless curiosity, the little ones draw these spirits in their notebooks to understand their nature and learn from them.

With a set-collection core mechanism, the goal of Yokai Sketch is to score more yokai points than the other player by completing drawings of the elusive forest spirits. The game consists of two decks of cards: in one are four types of yokai, each associated with an element (water, fire, earth, and wind) and a numerical value that corresponds to victory points, and in the other, sketches made by humans, two of the four elements, and possibly a special ability. At the start of the game, the yokai cards are stacked in four decks (one for each element) and three sketch cards are dealt face down to players. On their turn, players draw a new sketch card and slide one of their four cards under one of the four decks in the center of the table so that it reveals the element associated with that yokai. If by doing this the yokai reaches or exceeds the number needed to draw it (adding the sketches on both sides of the card), the player who has accumulated the most drawings on their side of the table takes it.