Critter Kitchen Board Game Review

Critter Kitchen is 1 of those games with a batch of small bits that you’ll request to benignant done and acceptable up earlier each play. You commencement with the cardinal board, which is truly conscionable a bifold accusation tracker and paper organizer, onto which goes the woody circular marker and supra which goes a assortment of cards from 3 antithetic decks, indicating the objectives, nutrient critic, and scoring bonuses disposable during your game.

Beneath the main committee determination are boards for the antithetic locations you tin visit, which alteration with the fig of players. Each subordinate besides gets a platform of matching determination cards, 3 cardboard plates, and a large critic’s plate, arsenic good arsenic a subordinate surface down which they tin fell their increasing stack of constituent tokens. There are a batch of these, each of which indispensable beryllium punched retired and stored successful the provided drawstring bag, from which they’re pulled and assigned to locations during play. The last location, The Chef Academy, besides has an associated platform of further chefs for hire, each of which comes with a punch-out token to correspond them successful play.

Wooden pieces travel successful the signifier of 3 cook tokens for each player, chopped and printed to lucifer the animals they represent, a mouse, lizard and boar respectively, alongside a chef’s chapeau token to usage connected the precedence track.

The art, throughout, is superb. There’s truly nary reason, mechanically, wherefore Critter Kitchen should impact carnal chefs alternatively than quality ones, but it is simply a large excuse to showcase Tang’s delightful art. The cutesy benignant won’t beryllium to everyone’s sensation but if you tin get into it, it’s precise evocative, making the game’s setting, Bistro Bay, travel to beingness with thing much than an alliterative sanction and immoderate incredibly charming, characterful illustrations of its denizens.

Rules and How It Plays

Given the somewhat fiddly setup, it’s possibly a astonishment to find that the crippled runs accelerated and creaseless erstwhile play gets underway. One player, labelled the Maître d', spends a infinitesimal astatine the commencement of each of the 7 rounds to capable the shops with tokens drawn from a bag, indicating what tin beryllium recovered there. Mostly these are cooking ingredients that person a prime standing betwixt 2 and 7, but determination are besides spice tokens that treble the worth of the matching ingredient, and rumors, which fto players find retired much astir the hidden last scoring requirements. The last location, The Chef Academy, besides gets a random “Zous Chef” card.

Each subordinate past secretly chooses a determination for each of their 3 chefs by assigning them a face-down determination paper from their hand. Each cook has a standing betwixt 1 and 3, with little values going archetypal but being capable to acquisition less items. When each the cards are assigned, they’re revealed, and the matching cook portion goes connected the matching location. You past scan done the locations from near to right, and the chefs successful that determination from 1 to 3, picking which items from the banal that you privation to instrumentality backmost to your kitchen.

This signifier of play is an implicit riot. Shops mostly lone person 3 items available, truthful if a 1-value cook and a 3-value cook get assigned to the aforesaid shop, the 1-value cook gets archetypal prime of the stock, and the 3-value cook lone gets to instrumentality 2 items home. In a crowded field, oregon if 1 of the shops has a peculiarly tasty draw, this means there’s a existent hazard of a higher worth cook going location bare handed though they get a consolation crockery – a 1-value constituent that tin beryllium utilized arsenic a wildcard successful spot of immoderate different – instead.

Assigning your chefs is frankincense a tense tightrope locomotion of trying to prioritize what you request and what you tin risk, portion second-guessing what different players mightiness do, past praying things enactment retired for you erstwhile everyone reveals their cards. The hostility doesn’t halt there, though. Sometimes, a subordinate won’t prime what you expect and you get thing you wanted but were expecting to lose. Sometimes the queue-based tie-break mechanics kicks in, erstwhile 2 chefs of the aforesaid worth beryllium connected the aforesaid spot, and the subordinate who wins goes to the backmost of the queue, meaning ties successful aboriginal shops mightiness enactment retired successful your favor. It’s each crossing fingers and biting lips close up until the past 2 shops successful the chain.

The penultimate determination is the Midnight Market, wherever you can’t spot what’s connected connection until you resoluteness the location. It’s a risky proposition arsenic it’s not lone hard to foretell who mightiness beryllium there, but tin besides beryllium a large mode for a 3-value cook to snag immoderate unbelievable bargains, oregon tin pb to them trudging location with a bagful of grot. The last store is the Chef Academy, wherever you tin drawback the unbelievably utile Zous Chef, who acts arsenic a full other cook for you adjacent round, with a useful bonus quality to boot.

Competition for the Zous Chef tin go fierce, but successful a clever twist, immoderate ingredients near implicit from erstwhile shops get sent to the academy, meaning there’s often a grab-bag of different worldly to prime up here. So you tin ever delegate dilatory chefs present successful the anticipation they’ll travel distant with something, but they hazard picking up dross and person astir nary accidental of getting that super-helpful Zous Chef. In Critter Kitchen, each chalice is perchance poison by the clip you get there. But portion different players often upset your well-laid plans, the hidden determination enactment means it ne'er feels cruel oregon targeted, giving the crippled plentifulness of enactment without excessively overmuch negativity.

What you’re carrying location from this huffy dash to the markets are ingredients that you’ll usage to service up 3 meals aft rounds 3 and 6, and past a last plating to delight a nutrient professional successful circular 7. The ingredients needed for the archetypal 2 scoring intervals are revealed 1 crook astatine a time, adding a delicious frisson of uncertainty to proceedings. You’ll get a smattering of points depending connected the prime of ingredients you sheet up but the bands are wide: a full of 6 prime is capable to get you 1 point, but 21 prime gets a whopping four. That makes the decisions astir what to propulsion successful and what to support overmuch much difficult, arsenic does a bounds connected the fig of items you tin transportation implicit aft each plating round.

Most of the points travel from the critic’s plate. This needs each 7 types of ingredient, and the subordinate with the highest prime successful each benignant gets a point. The critics themselves are represented by a paper that offers a circumstantial bonus: you’re recommended to commencement playing with the rodent critic, for example, who gives other points for the champion food course. Once that’s each been assigned there’s an other tranche of points from the full prime of ingredients you’ve utilized successful your professional plate, past you tally up everyone’s last full to spot who’s won.

Scoring rounds instrumentality a small while, arsenic everyone figures retired what ingredients they privation to use, but different than that the crippled ticks on astatine a precise pleasing gait due to the fact that of the mode your cook locations are decided simultaneously. And contempt the evident chaos of this round, it manages to onslaught a equilibrium betwixt strategy and excitement: you’ll beryllium rewarded for prioritizing good conscionable arsenic overmuch arsenic you’ll beryllium thwarted by failing astatine mind-games and second-guessing your opponents. Similarly, the dilatory uncover of objectives and rumors tin sometimes consciousness frustratingly random, but truly helps to support up the hostility and tempo of play.

Where to Buy

• Barnes & Noble
• Lucky Duck Games

Originally posted:

Sep 12, 2025 7:26 pm