Bag of Chips is a party game in which you will face crucial choices to score as many points as possible at the end of each round. Be careful, though, because if you're too greedy, you will lose a lot!
At the start of a round, each player is dealt six objective cards and the 25 chips — in five colors, ranging from 7 yellow potato chips to 3 orange chicken chips — are placed in the bag. Someone draws five chips from the bag and places them on the table, then everyone discards two of their objective cards. The player draws four more chips, then everyone discards another objective card. The player draws three more chips, after which everyone places two of their cards on the positive scoring side of their playing area and the final card on the negative scoring side. The player then draws two more chips, one by one, both for increased drama and for some of the objective cards.
If a played objective card has not been completed, discard it. Add the points from your completed positive objective cards (if any), then subtract points from your negative objective card (if any). The player with the highest score wins two reward tokens, and the player with the second highest score wins one reward tokens. Complete rounds until someone has four or more reward tokens and wins. (In a two-player game, only the player with the higher score receives a reward token, and whoever first collects three tokens wins.)
Bag of Chips Review!
- Travel-friendly components; sturdy chips that are easy to carry.
- Fast setup and quick rounds, conducive to on-the-go play.
- Engages players with probability, planning, and calculative decision making.
- Accessible to families and casual players while offering strategic depth.
- Push-your-luck mechanics may be off-putting to players who dislike randomness.
- Reliance on probability can be frustrating for some; thematic flavor may feel tangential.
- Some may find the card-to-score mapping and negative scoring a bit opaque at first.
- Risk management and set-collection via color-coded chips
- Abstract probability-based bag-draw game featuring color chips
- Array
- Analytical, probability-forward
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- point optimization — Balance positive and negative scoring cards across rounds.
- Push Your Luck — Draws from a bag with probabilistic outcomes and scoring cards.
- push-your-luck — Draws from a bag with probabilistic outcomes and scoring cards.
- set collection — Form specific color combinations to score cards.
- set_collection — Form specific color combinations to score cards.
- turn-based-drafting — Players select which cards to pursue and which to discard before final scoring.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- it's a pushy luck Style game you're gonna be plucking chips out of this bag
- it's such a fast setup you can play this anywhere anytime
- this is a game about statistics it's kind of planning ahead what you think is going to get pulled out of the bag based off of probabilities
- the biggest positives of this game is how travel friendly it is
- I am not a huge book Sherlock fan I don't like having to make guesses about things that are about to happen
References (from this video)
- liked it when played for the first time
- short and easy to teach
- fun in a family-weight line
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- it's a really, really good game
- I absolutely love this game
- it's an amazing game
- this is one of my most favorite solo games