Disclosure: Meeple Mountain received a free copy of this product in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. This review is not intended to be an endorsement.
It’s hard to make a good game. Making a good product, an attractive physical object, is easier. There are a lot of great-lookin’ okay games out there, and I feel it is incumbent upon me as a reviewer to keep my eyes clear, to not allow production to obscure my perception. It’s my job to weed one from the other. As my hero Joe Friday used to say, “Just the facts, ma’am.” I cannot allow myself to be swayed by production alone.
But then I opened the container for Barbecubes, the newest game in the Tinderblox series, and saw those little 16-bit steaks, burgers, fish, and sausages. And the container turns into the grill upon which you set these wooden delights? I’m only so strong.
As a game, Barbecubes is okay. You reveal a card, you add the shown food to the grill. If anything falls in the grill, you take the card, playing until someone has three. Like Tinderblox, Barbecubes is pleasant enough as a game. I myself prefer Tinderblox, with its added degree of vertical precarity, but I find the components here so endearing that they compensate.
Normally, a game like this would be ideal fodder for our Quick Peaks column, since there isn’t much to say, but I wanted to share some photos. Sometimes, especially when a game is small, quick, and cheap enough, good components are enough to get the job done.
Barbecubes details
- Designer: Brett J. Gilbert, Rob Sparks
- Artists: Rory Muldoon
- Publishers: Alley Cat Games
- Release Date: 2025
- Player count : 2 - 6
- Age range : 8+
- Time range : 3 - 15 minutes
- Mechanism(s): Player Elimination, Stacking and Balancing
- BGG Geek Rating: 6.98723 - converted to Meeple Mountain scale: 3.5.
- More articles about Barbecubes.
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