Top 10 Food Games - with Tom Vasel

0:08 Hey everybody, I'm Tom Bassel and I will talk about my top 10 games that are based on the subject of food. And I'm always amused at, you know, it took a long time, decades before many food games really came out, which is a weird thing to me because the world kind of revolves around food. Um, especially in America, we eat a lot of food obviously, but when you go to other countries, so much of the culture revolves around cooking meals and doing things like that. And that's a fun thing to bring to board games. And I like a lot of games. I'm I'm I'm going to exclude from my list games that are about feed your people, you know, and agricula and cavern and other games where you constantly have to feed people so they survive. But games that are kind of focused on food to some degree. I find it to be a fun thing overall. So, here are my favorite 10. Number 10 is Sweet Mess Pastry Competition. This has some really nice components, almost overly nice with these little poker chips, and you are constantly kind of grabbing stuff, but then it spills over into other gems, and you're just collecting these chips and then using these chips to make different pastries. The chips have different ingredients on them, and then using those pastries to to score and get points for various things. It's a pretty simple game, but it looks really delicious. You have this chef with a special ability and all these cool ingredients out there. And the only thing I get, you know, is a little odd is that, you know, you're you're a messy messy baker in this game, which I don't think you would be necessarily, but it is fun to take all these ingredients, put them together, and make those delicious delicious desserts. Um, as a

1:41 side note, as I'm going through this list, no burger game made my list, but as a heads up, there are many, many games about making burgers out there. Number nine is the worst food game on my list in a sense of the food is the worst. This is Soviet Kitchen Unleashed. They actually made a uh sequel to this or a follow-up to is a remaking of this called Yummy Yummy Monster Tummy. But Soviet Kitchen Unleashed is a hilarious game about making these terrible dishes in the Soviet kitchen. But you are it's all these cards. It uses an app and they each card has a color on it and you scan the cards. The game will give you a target color. So, it's some sort of, you know, teal, for example. So, I'll play a blue card, you'll play a white card, next person plays a card that's slightly purplish, and we're hoping that the composition of all these colors comes close, and they'll give you a percentage. It will analyze the color that you made and say, you're 77%, good job. Go to the next one. It's basically trying to make the right dish with these different foods that are different colors. It's hilarious. Lots of jokes and silliness. I just really enjoy that.

2:44 Soviet kitchen unleashed. Number eight is Critter Kitchen. In Critter Kitchen, you are sending out your different cooks to go out and get all in these different spots on the board to gather resources to make these different things. You're you're making up different uh uh things in your kitchen. So, you're just sending people out uh to get these things. It's animals going out getting different foods and all. There's a lot of cute food games that I could put on the list. I mean, this list could I could have probably done a top 100 food games. There's so many. Uh, but that's my number eight, Critter Kitchen. Number seven, let's talk about pizza. Mama Mia. This is an early early Uve Rosenberg game in which you have pizza and each person is trying to make pizzas. So, I might have a pizza that requires three pepperoni and two pineapple. And we are playing these ingredients in a shared pile. And when you think that pile has enough resources to make your pizza, you throw a pizza on top. And you're constantly throwing these pizzas and ingredients into this pile. sort of a memory game, a shared memory game. And I know a lot of people don't like memory, but this I have taught this to many people and it has gone over very well.

3:50 So, Mamame Mia or it's followup solo meal, which is the same game. Basically, a very fun pizza game. Number six is Monster Crunch. Hey, we're now we're talking about breakfast cereal, and this is talking about actual breakfast cereals from uh the Count Count Choula, not Count Choula. Yeah, Count Choula and Frankenberry and Booberry. You have these cereals, these actual cereals, and you are playing a card shedding game with them. And and milk is a resource in the game, and it's just it's a cute game that is a decent card shedding game that I liked a lot more than I thought I would. So, an enjoyable one. Monster Crunch. Number five is Cupcake Empire. I love cupcakes. In this game, you are starting a little cupcake business and selling cupcakes all across the land.

4:40 Uh, but in this country, for some reason, if someone is wearing a green shirt and brown pants, that means they want a chocolate cupcake with green icing. It's apparently there's a rule that you have to eat the way you're dressed. So, you're going around trying to find the customers and make the proper cupcakes. You're putting these cupcakes together to sell to different people. And it is actually very fun. My number five, cupcake empire. Number four is San Franito uh or Hibachi. These are almost the exact same game and they're both about food. One's about making Italian I mean Italian Indian spices and the other is about Japanese habachi. And they are flicking games or tossing games. You're putting chips on a board and trying to make them land in the right spot so you can get the ingredients that you need to make your stuff. It's a fun dexterity game. It's very weird. I'm was kind of my mind was blown when they actually remade the game Habachi. But I like both versions of this. I like getting the food. I like throwing the chips. It is fun. That's my number four. Number three is Walk and Roll. Now, Walk and Roll is a game in which you are rolling dice. It's a roll and write style game. You roll dice and you're filling in ingredients and it's about making Chinese food. Now, I will say I like walk and roll, but there's an expansion for it called the Korean Wave, which brings in Korean dishes. And not only does it add dishes I love a lot to the game, Korean dishes, but it also adds some rules, and I think it's a much better game, actually. So, rock and roll with the Korean wave is my preferred combo here. But walk and roll by itself

6:12 is a really fun roll dice, get the ingredients you need, and then make dishes and serve them on your menu. Number two is Shakuri. This is a game in which you're collecting ingredients. It's an I split you choose type situation where you're putting these ingredients out. People will take them and then you need to put these on your tray in various ways. You can put them on your tray any way you want. But there's all these different scorings. Like you might get points for every meat that touches cheese or you might get points for having, you know, the hummus next, you know, having the most different kinds of hummus on your board. Doesn't matter where they are. And so you're trying to follow all these rules and it's a very gorgeous game. When you're done, you look down at it and go, "That's my Shakerti report. That's pretty cool." Number two, and number one is Sushi Go or Sushi Go Party, which is my preferred way of playing. You're drafting cards and you're drafting sushi as it goes around the table. This is a very basic drafting game that works really well. It's a game in which cards come to you. You'll take a card, keep it, pass it to the next player, the hand of cards. Someone passes their hand of cards to you, you take another card, and then you will score. It's kind of it's not only is it a that's a fun mechanism, but it works in this game because it's like the sushi coming around and you're grabbing it off the conveyor belt. I like that concept a lot. It is a lot of fun and it's my number one food themed game. There are a lot that I didn't mention and I'm sure you all have a lot of fun food themed games. Let me know in the comments what your favorite are.

7:34 Until next time though, I'm Tom Vassel and this is the Dice Tower. Hey everybody, thanks for watching another video from the Dice Tower. Hey, you want to learn more about us, communicate with us, we have a Facebook group, we have a Discord channel, lots of different ways to get involved with the Dice Tower. You can find that in our link tree link below. So, just click that. It will take you and you can communicate with us on Facebook, join our Facebook groups. There's lots of cool things that you can find and become part of the Dice Tower. Thanks so much for watching. I'm Tom Bassel.