Critter Kitchen: Rapid Review
Information:
Player Age: 10+
Player Count: 1 - 5 Players
Time to Play: 20 Minutes
Year Published: 2025
Disclaimer: A review copy for the game was provided by the VR Distribution.
Rundown:
Critter Kitchen is a simultaneous worker placement game played over seven rounds. It will have players gaining ingredients from several locations in preparation for creating three dishes; twice in the game and a final seven-course meal for the critic at the end of the game. Each round you will be sending out three workers; a mouse, a lizard, and a boar. Each of these workers has a speed (order of resolution) and an amount they can carry. This alternates from the mouse resolving first but only being able to carry one ingredient, to the boar resolving last but can carry three ingredients.
Rounds:
Start of Round:
The ‘maître d’ card will explain in detail and remind players that upkeep needs to be done during this phase. Essentially, the locations will be refilled with new ingredients, including one bisque token on the soup truck if empty, new challenges revealed, and a new zous-chef revealed replacing the old zous-chef if they are still there.
Planning:
This phase has players simultaneously placing one location card face down in front of each chef, determining which location they will go to. If there is a player with a zous-chef gained from the last round they will play a fourth location under that chef.
Running:
Simultaneously, all players will now place their chefs at the correct location. This is to say that each chef will go on one of the three sections at the top of the location as based on their speed.
Shopping:
Starting with the first location (Soup Truck)
to the last location (Chef Academy), players will resolve the chefs starting with the mice and moving up to the boars. This means players will gain ingredients equal to their carry amount. The zous-chef (chefs academy), and bisque or normal soup (soup truck), both count as one ingredient. The Midnight Merchant location will have the ingredients revealed once that location begins to be resolved.
If a player cannot or chooses not to gain anything, they can instead gain one pity soup. Before the chefs academy is resolved, all the leftover ingredients (except for rumors) will move to this location, giving the players a second chance at gaining these ingredients.
End of Round:
At the end of the round, each player will take back their workers and location cards, then the round tracker will advance. If it wasn’t chosen, the zous-chef will leave and all leftover ingredients will move to the soup truck.
Alteration:
Critter Kitchen is a game that is well built for alterations between each game. This is speaking for just the retail edition, not to mention the added variation that the ‘Á La Cart’ expansion adds. The main source of alteration is; the 28 rumor cards, three of which will be used each game, the critic that will change at the end scoring (at least), zous-chefs, and restaurateur.
Rumors:
Rumors are secret end-game scoring or final critic meal multipliers.
The interesting element to the rumors is that they are not common knowledge. Players will only gain information on their scoring details if the owner gains a rumor ingredient through the shopping phase.
Zous Chef:
A zous-chef will only last the round following the one in which you gained them. They add two great benefits; being a time-limited extra worker (with different carrying capacity/speed), and having a special ability that can occur either before your first pick, after your last pick with the zous-chef, or at the start of the location they are activating.
Critics:
Critics determine any tweaks to the final critic meal. This could be that mushrooms are made wild, or any amount of cheese may be included in the critic meal, etc. Some of these Critics also have effects on the rest of the game as spice counting as times three multiplier instead of two.
Restaurateur:
These cards create variable player powers. This could mean extra scoring potentials or added benefits during the game.
Pièce de résistance:
There are three meals you create during the game. The first two occur after round 3 and round 6. These dishes will have you create 1-3 plates, each representing one of the challenges. All three ingredients, and only these ingredients on the challenge, can be used. Each of these ingredients can be used multiple times. A soup can be used if needed to substitute one ingredient. This can be performed twice but not a third time.
Players are trying to gain numerous stars per dish by reaching a combined value in the dish as shown in the chart below. To reach this value, multiple soups can be added and a chilli can be attached to one ingredient to double its value. After the first time this occurs, only five unused ingredients (ignoring soups) may be kept and on the second occurrence, 10 can be kept.
The Pièce de résistance, aka the critic’s meal, will occur after round 7. This is only one round after the second time food is served. Players can only use one ingredient of each type and are trying to present a seven-course meal. If all seven courses are achieved, they will gain one bonus star. Each dish can have one chilli, but no soup is allowed.
At the end of the game players will score one star if they have the highest value in each of the seven courses, rumours score individually, and the player with the highest value in soups will gain one point. Then the main player board will be flipped over and each player will tally the final value of their seven-course meal, gaining the amount of points shown on the right-hand side of the value track. This can gain the players a lot of points if planned correctly.
Interaction:
Due to the structure of the different workers and simultaneous worker placement, players will clash over locations a lot. Tie breakers for the same worker are unique in this game as they are shown at the top of the board with chef hats. When in a tie, each player will choose an ingredient one at a time until the carry limit is met.
If the victor of the tie-break was the first player to gain an ingredient in this location then their chef hat will move to the back of the cue. If they aren't the first, this won't occur. I find that this isn't a negative interaction, just part of the planning of the game where players will often score big at un-contested locations or have to alter their strategy on the go when others take the good ingredients (or in many cases, all the ingredients).
Determination:
- Enjoy the slow reveal of information, meaning you have to constantly pivot your plans.
- Good variability.
- Constant clashes with other players creates great tension and the need for adaptive plans.
- Only three instances of dishes getting made which doesn't sound like a lot but gives you the perfect number of rounds in which to plan.
- For a gateway+ game there are a lot of little rules and Intricacies that sound more perplexing to new players than they are, however, the game is very intuitive once you play a few rounds.
Critter Kitchen is a vibrant resource management game that has players competing and pushing their luck for the right ingredients. Each player will send 3 (sometimes 4) workers out each round with varying speeds and ingredient-carrying limits. The great part about this game is that in the retail box alone there is a great variance between plays. This is due to different end-game scoring that starts as hidden information, different critics that effect gameplay and end-game scoring, as well as Restaurateurs' which alter player abilities. If you enjoy worker placement games with constant player clashing that demands an adaptable strategy, I easily recommend Critter Kitchen and award it a Go To Golden Game seal.
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