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 recently connected with Daryl Chow, the head and lead designer of Origame, at PAXU 2024. During our catch-up, he passed along a couple of review copies of older games from his catalog. Shop Until You Drop (or Shop Until You Drop Lah, the full title printed on the box) is a family-weight card game where players get the chance to match sets while trying their best to not bust out of the round before other players “drop”, losing a portion of their score.
I got the game in front of my family and my review group in recent weeks, and based on the early returns, my wife and eight-year-old loved what they saw. While the game did not perform as well with the review crew (i.e., core hobbyists), Shop Until You Drop still entertained me during its 20-minute playtime.
That’s because it has tension. That tension is tied to weird things, like finding 50% off on a hot new pair of sneakers, milestone scoring cards for my boss Sabo Singh, and some fun Singaporean comic book art. Mr. Kiasu, anyone?
Shop, But Don’t Drop Yet
Shop Until You Drop is a three-round, 2-4 player card game. Using a face-up market of shopping cards and milestone (Tompang) scoring cards totaling one plus the number of players, each turn features players drafting cards and adding them to one of three shopping bags, cutely designed as a tableau builder outward from each player’s character card in their play area.
The rules are simple. Players can draft any card they would like, but can only store them in their bags (each player has three by default) if the card meets one of two rules: it’s got to be the same color as every other card in that bag, as long as the total doesn’t exceed 100% off…or each card has to offer the same discount (say, 20%) in up to five different shopping categories, broken up by color.
If a player ever drafts a card they can’t place—and players are always eligible to move shopping cards across their three shopping bags—or if they ever draft a third Tompang card, they immediately “drop”, or bust, from the round. That player has to remove all the cards from one of their bags, then all players keep their respective played cards in a pile that will score at the end of the game.
When three rounds are up, players get points based on the size of the discounts on their cards, by converting shopping cards into points that range from 1-6 points per card. Also, every Tompang card scores five points if a player meets its scoring condition—but loses three points for every card they can’t fulfill. Across my plays, scores ranged in the mid-50s to the mid-80s, and the math wasn’t too hard to figure out by the end.
Shop Until You Drop’s best moments arrive thanks to one thing about the shopping cards I have not mentioned: many of the cards require the active player to choose an additional card blind, from the top of the deck, to add to one of their three shopping bags. Worse, some cards ask the player to the left or right of the starting player to draw a card from the top of the deck. Fitting a card into your tableau in this way is often impossible, so the collective dread that sets in across the table when a player has to draw cards is quite a hoot.
Quick Decisions, Quicker Game
Shop Until You Drop worked for my family because the art is great, the decision space is tight, and some of our games finished in less than 10 minutes. Add all this to the tension referenced earlier, and you have something that works pretty well in that handsome timeframe just before dinner hits our table.
Shop Until You Drop is based on the popular Mr. Kiasu comic from the 1990s in Singapore. I had never heard of it or seen it before seeing the images in this game, but the artwork really helps with the game, giving everything a nice boost, between the silly pictures of the playable characters and the simple images of shopping items ranging from watches to handheld gaming systems to shoes and underwear. It’s a shopping game, and a math game, and a game where players are trying to pick the right cards to score the most points without busting too soon.
Is Shop Until You Drop a legend? I didn’t think so, but for a breezy time at the table, you can do a lot worse. Some rounds of this game ended so fast it made my wife’s head spin, particularly when a player has drafted one Tompang card but then has an unfortunate turn where they top-decked two more Tompang cards, busting out of the round. In one of my two-player games with my wife, the game ended in about seven minutes.
Is that too short to be memorable? I would argue yes. It didn’t make the game bad, but it’s hard to resonate when you finish a game faster than a piece of chewing gum loses flavor.
However, at four players, that is going to be rare. At the largest player count, Shop Until You Drop is worth a look.
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