LogFAQs > #985864841

#05 - Critter Kitchen
My Score: 8.0
BGG Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/393429/critter-kitchen
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In contrast to my last two games, Critter Kitchen is a relatively simpler game. I've heard it is a spiritual successor to flamecraft with the same publisher artist but I have not played flamecraft so I can't comment on this too much. From what I've heard they do play differently so don't let your opinion of one influence your opinion of the other.

Also I lied earlier, I forgot about this when I said I only played Leviathan Wilds without any strangers playing with us. Me and my two friends played this by ourselves in the hot games room pretty late at night on the third day, but we did have a nice lady teach us the rules for the game real quick (She was unable to play at the time).

Critter Kitchen is played over 7 days with whoever has the most points at the end winning. The game revolves around sending your workers out to get ingredients and at the end of the third, sixth and seventh day you preparing meals for judges using your ingredients to earn stars (points).

I'm going to go backwards and talk about the judging first and then go into getting the ingredients. You are judged three times throughout the game, and the first two times work exactly the same with the final judging working a bit differently. The first judging takes place after day 3. At the beginning of each of the first 3 days a desired dish will be flipped which takes three different ingredients. (The third days dish will only have two ingredients with the third blocked off to make up for having less time to compare).

So once you get to judging you will have three dishes to make. In order to present a dish you have to have each ingredient represented or you cannot present, BUT you can substitute soup for ingredients (soup is magical in the land apparently) as long as you have at least one of the proper ingredients. For the ingredients you use you can use as much of it as you want each each ingredient will have a different point value (soups value is 1, there is an upgraded soup bisque that is worth 3) which seem to range from like 2-7. There is also spice which can be used as a 2x multiplier on the appropriate ingredient (ie there is a spice for cheese that can only be used on cheese).

You then add up the total value of the ingredients and that determines how many stars the dish earns. 6+ is 1 star, 12+ is 2 star and 21+ is 4 star. So ideally you would get 21 stars on each dish and no more as any over is wasted. But mainly you are trying to be efficient. You don't get a penalty for not presenting a dish, but this isn't a super high scoring game so not getting points is hurtful.

The second set of three days functions exactly like the first, but the final day is different. At the beginning of the game a celebrity critic will be chosen (we had The Mouse, his affected cheese) who slightly changes how the final day will play out. But in essence you are making a smorgasbord, one ingredient (You can spice it though) of each type (there are 7 types). You get a bonus star if you present all 7 ingredients, and then you compete against the other players for each ingredient. The highest for each gets a star. (So you could theoretically get 7 stars from this alone).

Whoever has the most value in soup left at the end of the game gets a star (you cannot use soup on the last day). The last way to earn points is the "rumors", basically three hidden objectives about ways you can score bonus points on the last day. These are hidden but there is a way to see them I'll go over in a bit. An example of this could be "if your rightmost ingredient is your highest value earn 3 stars" or "double the value of carrots". I will say that some of them, like the carrot one, don't seem to do much other than mess up the other goals since it is doubled for everyone but that's probably my only minor complaint about the game.

Now that you understand how scoring works and what you will use soup, ingredients and spices for let's go over how to get them. In this game you have three workers you can send out each day, a small fast one that holds one ingredient, a medium one that holds two, and a large slow one that holds 3. Then there are various locations that you can send them to that hold ingredients. The locations differ depending on player count with you having more options at higher player counts.

In your hand you will have a card for each location and simultaneously you will assign a location to each of your workers face down. Once everyone has you flip the cards over and put your guys on their appropriate locations. You will then resolve each location left to right. When resolving a location the small guys go first, then the mediums, then the larges. For ties in sizes (ie if two players played a medium in the same location) there is a first pick tracker. Whoever is closer to first on the track goes first and then is moved to the back of the track (so they will have less priority next time). For medium and large its not a first player takes all of their stuff, then the second player takes all of their stuff kind of thing, but rather first takes one item, then second takes one item then first takes their second item kind of thing.

Lets talk about locations, with the basic setup there are 3 special locations and everything else function pretty much the same. The general locations each have a certain number of slots for ingredients (3-5 I believe) that are randomly drawn each day before you select where your workers go. Once they are all taken they are empty for the rest of the day, so the large guys (and sometimes medium guys) have a chance to end up with nothing. There is a location called midnight merchant that has 5 ingredients but they aren't drawn until after you select where your guys are going, so it's somewhat of a gamble. There's the chef academy which is the rightmost location and gets all the unused ingredients from the other locations. So it can end up with a lot of choices if people double up or it can end up almost empty. This location also has an intern worker that you can use one time the following day that you can take in lieu of an ingredient. He works largely the same as one of your three normal workers, but usually has some kind of special ability.

The final location is actually the first location, the soup kitchen. At the end of the day anything unused in the chefs kitchen goes here. It also gets one bisque each day, as well as an unlimited amount of soup.

For the random ingredients it can be any of the ingredients with any of the possible values, the spices for each ingredient (as well as i think or 2 allspice that work for any ingredient) or one of three symbols. Those symbols represent the bonus cards and if you get one you are allowed to look at the bonus card for the rest of the game. Another thing to note is that after the third day you can only carry over 5 non-soup ingredients (soup is still magical), and after the sixth day you can only carry over 10.