I landed this copy of Forks after entering a fellow blogger’s Instagram competition. This won’t be the longest of reviews as the game is a quick card game, however, is it not often the case that a quick and simple card game can just charm an avid game player.
What’s it about
The “colour” of Forks is that it is tourist season and you must decide which locations to “invest” in. Alongside this you must try and encourage players to “market” the locations that you have invested in.
Gameplay
The forks gameplay is so simple I could pretty much describe the entirety to you within a reasonable length review. It has similarities to Sushi-Go in that it has a draft one card and pass the rest along mechanic to each round. In Forks though you only start with three cards, draft one as an investment and pass the others along, receiving two cards of which one you choose as a second investment card and place the remaining card in the middle to market it. You play 3 or 4 rounds until the deck is depleted (cards are blindly discarded based on the number of players to ensure the deck runs down to no cards)
Winning
Each card has two features location (colour) and score value (with numerous different values for each colour of card). This value comes into play as it generates your score and the marketing value of the location.
Once the deck is depleted, the marketing cards for each colour group are scored and then the colour groups sorted by total. There is a specific order for splitting ties but they are not hugely common and only actually matter in one instance.
The top three highest scoring colour groups are good investments, whilst the bottom two are bad. The tie break, therefore, only matters if it impacts third and fourth place.
You then look at your investment cards. All investment cards that you have for the top three colour groups will score their value. Conversely, any investment cards in the bottom two groups will remove their value from your score. Whoever scores the highest total, with negative totals being possible if you invested a lot in the bottom two colour groups marketed, is the winner.
Components and Artwork
My set came in a card deck box with an empty larger, narrower, box that I opted to use after finding the smaller tight and fiddly; a nice idea. The box art also pops better in a larger format.
The cards feel good quality and like they’ll withstand a good number of games without wearing out or needing sleeves.
There is limited artwork, however, it does a nice enough job of illustrating the locations and “colour coding” them.
Final Thoughts
Forks is a nice light game with only 56 cards and an instruction booklet; this makes it portable. It also plays in 15 minutes, according to the box; we played through it even more quickly than this as complete novices to the game. The strategies needed are present and have some impact but not too much. You need to try and boost the marketable value of locations that you have invested the most in. For example, I handed a high value card over for a location that had barely been invested in and it turned my fortunes around when it went to the marketing group. The fact you do not have full control in the card that goes to market, as you hand two cards over and another player chooses one to keep and one to market, makes strategy very tricky. Obviously, you can have some influence on the market via the cards that you choose but you do not actually see these cards until that choice has to be made.
