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.
I ran into “friend of the program” Bree Goldman at the Arcane Wonders booth during my visit to Philadelphia for PAX Unplugged a few weeks ago. At the end of our time catching up, she handed me a game called Buffet Boss, a small-box dexterity game designed by Daryl Chow, the prolific designer who also has his own publishing label, Origame.
I always enjoy the games Daryl puts into the world, so I happily took the review copy and broke out Buffet Boss with my family during the Christmas holiday stretch. Here’s all I really need to tell you: my two kids (ages 10 and 8) and stepmom played Buffet Boss four times in less than 45 minutes and would have played it four more times were it not for the massive brunch that hit my table. It came out for three more plays the following week.
If a game comes out that often with my discerning critics-in-the-making children, the game is at least pretty good.
“That’s a Plate, Not a Boat”
Buffet Boss is a 1-5 player stacking game. Using a bunch of wooden food pieces representing all manner of meal items—chicken wings, cupcakes, eggs, grapes, and 12 other shapes—players have a small blue plate that is used to stack items drafted from a common pool on each of the game’s five turns in competitive mode.
The plate looks a lot like a slim rocking boat, so don’t get too caught up on the idea that you are really using a plate to stack your food. The rules are what matter. On a player’s turn, they will select one of the items pictured on cards set in the middle of the play area, cards that also show the point value of each piece once stacked on the plate. After the first piece, each new piece must touch either the plate or another existing piece. As you would expect, getting the fourth and fifth pieces to balance with everything else on the plate is a nice challenge.
The game’s rules allow for fallen pieces to be re-stacked using the five-second rule you use at home when fresh food hits your kitchen floor. (In Buffet Boss, it’s a three-second rule. Maybe food rules are different in other parts of the world!) In this way, even pieces that tip off of your plate can quickly be recovered and still score.
At the end of five rounds, the player who has the most points is the winner. An advanced variant adds character cards, which are each looking for specific conditions to boost the scoring potential. I recommend using these cards even if you are playing with younger children as there’s no real rules overhead added by using the character cards.
Buffet Boss, like Crash Octopus and Flotsam Float at our house, was a winner right out of the gates. The game’s “wow” moments come every time a player is somehow able to stack the weird variety of shapes offered. Even during our second game, I found that each person was cheering for another player when they got an egg stacked on a drumstick, or paused with bated breath when they tried to add their fifth piece of food to their plate to maximize scoring at the end of play.
The shapes are well produced, the characters on each card are humorously drawn (“Hangry” was my personal favorite), and the addition of both the advanced variant and a co-op high-score challenge give the game legs. Most of my family enjoyed Buffet Boss, but we all thought it was a bit too easy. My advice is to house-rule the base game rules by adding a sixth, or even seventh, round so that things really get tough by the end.
Another issue: a certain number of food cards are removed prior to each game. If a player draws character cards that don’t align with the deck—being rewarded with stacking white pieces is fairly useless if white food cards are never drawn, right? This means it can be hard to overcome the lack of bonus scoring potential in a round.
For a party/dexterity game, that’s not a killer, but it’s worth a callout. Otherwise, Buffet Boss has locked down a spot in our dexterity gaming collection—joined by the above games, plus experiences like Ice Cool and SEAL Team Flix—and I expect it to come out any time the in-laws come to town. Daryl Chow does it again!
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