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.
There were three letters on the table: M, I, and S.
Our buddy Smarckle (names have been altered to protect the innocent) stared at the table, knowing that the rules were simple: say a word that was related to the previous player’s word (“bear”), but that did NOT feature any of the three letters in front of him.
He only had 10 seconds to come up with a word. The clock was ticking down. He knew it; we knew it.
“Whistle,” he blurted out.
“GUACAMOLE!!!” shouted everyone else.
Smarckle had failed. He was still a nice guy, but he was a nice guy with three more letter cards in front of him. In Olé Guacamole (2022, Scorpion Masqué), the player with the fewest cards in front of them wins, so Smarckle was off to a tough start.
No one cared. Everyone was laughing, and with a game this easy to learn and fun to play, all that mattered was whether the good times would keep rolling.
Happy Hour Not Required
The example above includes all of the rules for Olé Guacamole. On a turn, the active player reveals a card (usually a letter, but sometimes a UNO-style ability card that changes the direction of play or who has to say a word), then that player has 12 seconds to say a word that does not contain the letter or letters on the table.
Succeed, and they pass those cards to the next player. Then that player draws a new card, and combined with any cards from the previous player, they must build a word that doesn’t contain the face-up letters, and that word must somehow be related to the word the last player said.
And so on. When a player fails, they take all of the letters they had in front of them, the other players yell “GUACAMOLE!!” then play moves on. When the 49 cards are gone, the player with the fewest cards in their possession wins.
Olé Guacamole checks almost every box for a short party game for me: less than a minute to teach, lots of dumb fun, your group will bring the heat if they are an interesting bunch of people, no edge cases or real complications.
The misses: four of the 49 cards have two or more letters on a single card. Why are there not more of these? Or why are there any at all? Sure, this is a “dumb fun” game, but it feels like a player could really get hosed by a card draw if they draw a multi-letter card.
The really strange one: the box seems to have room for at least double the number of included cards. Why is this box so large? The box is roughly the size of an avocado, but then you open the box and you say something like “where are all of the other cards?” Maybe expansion content is coming, but it feels like there should be more ways to spice this up.
That means that Olé Guacamole may not have much in the way of replayability beyond the first few times you break this game out with your gaming group. All good. As a $10 party game that you can stash in your purse, Olé Guacamole is a fun time!
Olé Guacamole details
- Designer: Guillaume Sandance
- Artists: Sébastien Bizos
- Publishers: Asmodee Italia, Le Scorpion Masqué
- Release Date: 2021
- Player count : 2 - 8
- Age range : 10+
- Time range : 15 - 0 minutes
- Mechanism(s): Action Timer, Real-Time
- BGG Geek Rating: - converted to Meeple Mountain scale: .
- More articles about Olé Guacamole.
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