If you can’t stand the heat…
In 2022 Cardboard Alchemy burst onto the scene with the much loved Flamecraft. Their gorgeous artwork by Sandara Tang set Kickstarter on fire and it became the thing to talk about when discussing the game. And while Flamecraft was a solid game, many criticised it for being a little too light. Well for their second publication, Alex Cutler’s Critter Kitchen takes Tang’s adorable world building and puts you in the shoes of animal chefs as they rush around town in order to get the ingredients they need to create critically acclaimed dishes.
As a big fan of Flamecraft, I have been watching Critter Kitchen with intrigue and without burying the lead here, I am really enjoying this culinary outing. Players will take on the roles of top chefs, all lovingly named after some of TV’s finest, Marther Shrewart and Jamie Owliver being two of my favourites! In your kitchen you have three chefs working for you, one small, one medium and one large, who will become your workers throughout the game with the possibility of hiring temporary zous-chefs as and when you need them. The town is made up of a series of locations, all offering an array of randomly selected foods to which you will need to sell your workers. But what makes Critter Kitchen so interesting is you must select where you are sending your working in secret before all revealing at the same time. This is important as each venue only has a limited amount of goods and they will be taken in order from the smallest worker (who can only carry one good) up to the big worker (who carries three). So you could play it safer and send your smallest worker but then you have to settle for only one good but risk sending your largest and you could get stung and the supply will be empty before it gets to you. It’s not a complete wash out as you can always get a soul from any location which works as a wild ingredient but it never feels quite as good as a plate full of fish, meat and bread! To add a little spice to the mix, there are three public end-game scoring cards, however you can only see what they are if you listen out for gossip at each venue, meaning you select a gossip token instead of an ingredient. These gossip tokens are limited and so are important to get but may mean missing out on that high scoring cheese! Although everyone can score these at the end, knowing what you are working towards could dictate who will win and who will lose.
There is one location where the goods will not be drawn until after the works have been placed and more importantly it can hold more goods than the others. Go here and be more likely to walk away with some ingredients but you will have no control over what appears there. There is also a lovely mechanic at the end of the street. In the training kitchen where you go to pick up a zous-chef, any ingredients not collected from the previous stalls will be pushed down and so again, it may be worth the risk but you will not have any control over what, if any, will be available.
If you can’t stand the heat…
In 2022 Cardboard Alchemy burst onto the scene with the much loved Flamecraft. Their gorgeous artwork by Sandara Tang set Kickstarter on fire and it became the thing to talk about when discussing the game. And while Flamecraft was a solid game, many criticised it for being a little too light. Well for their second publication, Alex Cutler’s Critter Kitchen takes Tang’s adorable world building and puts you in the shoes of animal chefs as they rush around town in order to get the ingredients they need to create critically acclaimed dishes.
As a big fan of Flamecraft, I have been watching Critter Kitchen with intrigue and without burying the lead here, I am really enjoying this culinary outing. Players will take on the roles of top chefs, all lovingly named after some of TV’s finest, Marther Shrewart and Jamie Owliver being two of my favourites! In your kitchen you have three chefs working for you, one small, one medium and one large, who will become your workers throughout the game with the possibility of hiring temporary zous-chefs as and when you need them. The town is made up of a series of locations, all offering an array of randomly selected foods to which you will need to sell your workers. But what makes Critter Kitchen so interesting is you must select where you are sending your working in secret before all revealing at the same time. This is important as each venue only has a limited amount of goods and they will be taken in order from the smallest worker (who can only carry one good) up to the big worker (who carries three). So you could play it safer and send your smallest worker but then you have to settle for only one good but risk sending your largest and you could get stung and the supply will be empty before it gets to you. It’s not a complete wash out as you can always get a soul from any location which works as a wild ingredient but it never feels quite as good as a plate full of fish, meat and bread! To add a little spice to the mix, there are three public end-game scoring cards, however you can only see what they are if you listen out for gossip at each venue, meaning you select a gossip token instead of an ingredient. These gossip tokens are limited and so are important to get but may mean missing out on that high scoring cheese! Although everyone can score these at the end, knowing what you are working towards could dictate who will win and who will lose.
There is one location where the goods will not be drawn until after the works have been placed and more importantly it can hold more goods than the others. Go here and be more likely to walk away with some ingredients but you will have no control over what appears there. There is also a lovely mechanic at the end of the street. In the training kitchen where you go to pick up a zous-chef, any ingredients not collected from the previous stalls will be pushed down and so again, it may be worth the risk but you will not have any control over what, if any, will be available.
Too many cooks…
But what is the purpose of all this? Well after rounds three and six you will be asked to prepare a number of meals in order to score points. Each day, a meal card will be flipped over and if you can satisfy the ingredients for each one, you can get a number of points based on the value of those ingredients. Soup can be used as wild but has a very low score and spice can be added to double the score of ingredients. However, any ingredients used are discarded.
At the end of the seventh day you will need to present seven dishes to the star critic and final scoring begins. In this final round, you will only be able to present one of each ingredient (seven in total) along with a spice and so getting high scoring foods will be vital for those extra points. You also score for most soup left over as well as public scoring cards. This round is the messiest element for me. For a game that is so slick and fast paced, the fiddly critic meal does come across as a little too convoluted than it needs to be with the player boards turning into scoring tracks but only scoring points for every seven valued ingredients you have all jarring the fun up to that point. That said, it is a small niggle in what is otherwise a fun and speedy experience, it doesn’t outstay its welcome but it also offers plenty of opportunity for strategy. If you can handle the heat, then I’d recommend getting into that Critter Kitchen!
