French Toast: Review
Information:
Mechanics: Deduction, Party, Cooperative, Word Game
Player Age: 6+ Player Count: 2 - 10 PlayersTime to Play: 5 - 10 Minutes
Game Designer: Peter C. HaywardGame Artist: Tina Bongorno, Frankie Clarkson, Laura EkbladPublisher: AllPlayYear Published: 2026BGG Weight: 1.33Disclaimer: A review copy for the game was provided by the publisher.
Player Age: 6+
Game Designer: Peter C. Hayward
Introduction:
French Toast is the latest twist to word association games. An alien has landed on earth. They are fixated on a single noun. Every round they can give a new clue that slowly reveals the properties of the noun. Besides this all the alien can do when responding to a guess is respond with the word that is closer to their noun, comparing the word just spoken and the previously repeated word. What's closer to the noun 'Book', is it a 'Tree' or 'TV'? This is a game that in concept doesn't sound like a game. Trust me there are a lot more decisions than expected to keep both the aliens and earthlings busy.
Game Anatomy:
Noun:
There is a deck of both basic and advanced nouns. There are 86 cards in each deck giving an abundance of variability.
Hint Cards and Hint Track:
Each round the alien will choose one hint card. This hint will slowly inform the player of information they can use to help facilitate their guesses.
Placing this card on any empty space of this hint track. The hint track is a six track board creating a scale of 'is' to 'is not' with the spaces in between being the different variances of this. Players place hints to describe to the other players if the noun is an animal, not smelly or sometimes, fragile. The way the hints are placed on this board really help drive the other players guesses. Each space on the track can only hold one hint card at a time. Whenever the alien is choosing a hint they can be rearranged at their discretion.
Setup:
- The alien will draw a random noun card from the basic or advanced deck.
- Setup the hint track as shown below.
How to Play:
The game lasts six rounds, these rounds can easily be broken down into the aliens (clue giver) turn and earthlings (guessers) turns.
The Alien is first, on their turn they will draw 6 hints choose one and place it on any empty space on the hint track. On later turns these hints can be rearranged. The other five hints are now discarded.
On the earthlings turn they simply say a guess, with the aim to say the noun that the alien is holding. The guess can be more than a single word, it actually can be a string of words as long as it is a finished thought. For example 'Made of wood' is allowed but 'Made of wood or steel' is not allowed.
In response to this the alien will say either the guess or the aliens previous spoken guess, this alerts the earthlings that the new or old guess is closer to the noun the alien has. The starting guess that will be compared to is 'French Toast'. The alien can respond at any tone of voice or facial expression to help convey information to the earthlings. When the noun is guessed by an earthling the game is finished and players cooperatively win, else the game naturally ends after the sixth round is resolved.
Final Thoughts:
- Really challenging for both the alien and earthlings.
- Good variety with easy to explain rules.
- There's a chance you will get frustrated as the alien, based on the earthlings diving down a specific rabbit hole. This is a part of the fun though.
French Toast is a riot, hearing the rules or the pitch, does not do the game justice. It is equally fun being the earthling and trying to deduce a noun from really not much information. But when kept on a path the earthling effort can really help pinpoint the specific noun. As the alien having earthlings focused on the type of plant when you have a 'Horse' can be equally frustrating and rewarding. As the alien needs to redirect them based on a couple of hint cards and the tone of their voice (paired with the right guesses). French Toast is receiving a Go To Golden Seal and will be entering Things in Rings as one of my go to word association games.
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