Review: Waffle Time
Who dose not love a waffle? How about a waffle with fruit on it? Well nows your chance to enjoy waffles and games at the same time, or maybe just a game that is waffle themed. Waffle Time designed by Maxime Demeyer is a delightfully light weight game that is published by Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG). Zak Eidsvoog's illustrations made me so hungry for waffles while playing the game.
Waffle Time incorporates all the toppings in a draft to be placed on your waffle in order to make patterns that will gain players points. Syrup and butter are also involved to add bonus points or to complete patterns (mandatory in my book). The Syrup tokens very much look like syrup on the waffles.
The syrup dispenser cards have each players unique setup
Setting up the game is easy there is a draft board that goes in the middle with 9 double sided topping tokens placed on it. This will also double as the turn tracker for the game. Each player gets a 5x5 grid waffle to place all their toppings onto. The syrup dispenser cards have each players unique setup (where the starting cream starts on their waffle).
The flow of the game is pretty easy and players will pick up on it within the first turn. The starting player will place their token next to the toppings they want to draft then place the 2 toppings they drafted onto their waffle. Cream tokens can only be placed on an empty space, fruit tokens may be placed on empty spaces or on top of cream tokens. After a player places their 2 drafted toppings (they must be orthogonally adjacent to each other) they will then check to see if they completed any patterns. There are pattern cards one for each of the 5 toppings that are shared between players. There are also 3 goal cards in the game. The goal cards all start with a butter token on them for the player that completes the goal first. The player that completes the goal first places the butter token on any open space on their waffle. This earns that player some extra points at the end of the game.
The game ends when the turn marker advances all the way around the board. At the end of each round players return their payer markers to the turn marker starting clockwise from the player marker and the closest player is first for the next round and so on. Scoring at the end of the game is made easy by the included scoring pad. Players total up the 5 ways of scoring and then one player is declared the wafflemaster. Ok, I added that last bit but the winner is the highest score.
The game is super quick to learn and could be a game that is multiplayer solitaire however the drafting mechanism brings the players together
Waffle Time can be as casual or strategic as a player wants to make it. The game is designed to be a fun casual game that can be played in 30 minutes or less. More experienced players will start to try and draft with other players boards in mind. This kicks the strategy up a bunch and may add time to the game. I really enjoyed Waffle Time we brought it to the brewery and played over a few beers and had a great time doing it.
The game is super quick to learn and could be a game that is multiplayer solitaire however the drafting mechanism brings the players together adds tension and some strategy. The game plays super fast after everyone has figured out the flow. This makes the game easy to play multiple times in a game session even if its at lunch break. The theme is on point with the mechanics it uses and brings players into the game. Having extra goal and fruit pattern cards gives the game a lot of replay, players are likely never to play the same game twice.
Players: 1-4
Year Published: 2023
Recommended Ages: 10+
Time to Play: 30 minutes
A copy review copy of Waffle Time was provided to Bert's Tabletop Games for this review by AEG.
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