I have waited so long to get my hands on Café Baras. Not only do I love coffee, but I’m also completely obsessed with capybaras. So the theme of this game ticks all my boxes.
Café Baras is designed by Roberta Taylor, who you might know from Creature Comforts and Maple Valley, with artwork by Cindy Monroy. It is bursting with light economic gameplay and some of the cutest illustrations you’ll find in board gaming. Published by KTBG, it already has all the signs of a family game winner.
I have waited so long to get my hands on Café Baras. Not only do I love coffee, but I’m also completely obsessed with capybaras. So the theme of this game ticks all my boxes.
Café Baras is designed by Roberta Taylor, who you might know from Creature Comforts and Maple Valley, with artwork by Cindy Monroy. It is bursting with light economic gameplay and some of the cutest illustrations you’ll find in board gaming. Published by KTBG, it already has all the signs of a family game winner.
Opening Hours
Café Baras is quick to get to the table. Shuffle the deck, give each player 7 coins, 4 cards, and a capybara barista. Then shuffle the special guests and display 5 face up and place the main deck in the centre of the table. Reveal 4 cards from the top of the deck to form the shared marketplace. Now it’s time to open your cafés.
Each capybara barista serves a unique signature item, so from the very start you’ll have one item you can already sell. It’s a nice little bonus that gives each player a different starting advantage.
On your turn, you’ll do one of two things. You can either pay the cost to place a card into your café, or you can serve a customer by using a card from your hand. Serving earns you coins equal to the items you’re able to sell.
After you’ve taken your action, you refill your hand by choosing one of the face-up cards from the marketplace and replace it with a new one from the deck. If the card you place into your café has a one-time bonus, carry it out straight away
One of the cleverest things about Café Baras is its multiuse cards. Each card can become something for your café: food, drinks, entertainment or furniture. These give you bonuses when you play them, like drawing extra cards or gaining coins, and they often unlock unique scoring conditions for the end of the game. They also act as items you need to fulfil customer orders or attract special guests for extra points.
If you run out of money, you can always use a card to serve a customer instead of adding to your café. The bottom half of each card shows a chalkboard with a customer’s order. Maybe they want iced drinks, tea and soup. For every matching item in your café, you’ll get one coin. If you have all three items, you’ll earn three coins. Then you discard the card.
Some customers have a love heart next to certain items. This means they’ll buy all of that item you have in your café. So if they love tea and you have three teas, that’s three coins just from tea alone. It’s worth noting you can’t use the same symbol more than once per item slot. If someone wants two snacks, you need to actually have two snack icons in your café to fulfil the full order. But you can always serve an incomplete order for fewer coins if needed.
If you manage to complete all three customer requests and match their aesthetic preference, maybe they love rustic or retro furniture, that customer becomes a regular. You’ll tuck the card under your capybara barista so only their order is showing, and they’ll now be worth 4 points at the end of the game.
Once a player has collected three regulars in a 3 or 4 player game, it triggers the final round. In a 2-player game, you play to four regulars. Early on, it can be tricky to meet all the requirements to get regulars, but after a few turns it becomes hard to avoid. You’ll soon find yourself balancing how to sell just enough without ending the game too soon, especially when you’re still holding that final card you’re desperate to play for more points.
Closing Time
The game ends in one of two ways. Either someone gains three or four regulars, depending on the player count, or the deck runs out and has to be shuffled twice. Once the game end is triggered, everyone else gets one final turn. Then it’s time to close up shop and find out who’s running the happiest capybara café.
First, players get one point for every two coins left in their tills. After that, add up the points from all the cards in your café, tally up the points from your regular customers, and check which special guests you managed to charm during opening hours.
Each game features 5 special guests. They’re out on display for everyone to see from the very start and each one has different requirements. Maybe the Abuela is popping by for an empanada and a Yerba Mate. If you’ve got both of those in your café, you’ll bag her six-point bonus. You can collect as many of these special guests as you can meet the conditions for, with a maximum of 30 points up for grabs. That said, it’s pretty rare to get more than two in one game because their tastes are usually quite different.
It’s important to note that these guests aren’t removed once someone scores them. Even if one player claims a special guest, others can still fulfil the same conditions and earn those points too. It’s a friendly capybara café after all, no one’s getting turned away.
Once all the points are counted, the player with the highest total wins. If there is a tie, the tied players share the victory!
Brew-tiful Design
For a card game, Café Baras really excels when it comes to design and component quality. Seriously, the card stock is so thick and sturdy, I think these might be the best cards I’ve ever owned in a board game.
The coins are more standard and feel a bit flimsy compared to the cards, but if you have some spare metal coins from another game, they’re easy to switch out.
The artwork by Cindy Monroy deserves a special mention. The illustrations of the capybaras are playful and full of personality, especially the special guests, and I love the way each barista has their own style. The food and drinks look genuinely tasty, and picking out new furniture to build up your café’s ambience is such a fun part of the game.
The only thing missing for me was a score pad. Café Baras isn’t a massive point salad, so it’s not essential, but it would have been nice to have one included. It’s always a bit of a mood-breaker when you have to rummage around for scrap paper to tally the final scores. A small gripe, but I do enjoy a well-designed score sheet.
Final Thoughts
The wait for Café Baras was absolutely worth it. I’ll admit, the longer it took to get to the table, the more I worried I’d built it up too much in my head. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case. This isn’t just a game that looks good and feels good in your hands. It plays really nicely too, with plenty of replayability and enough variety to keep each round feeling fresh.
The gameplay is light on the surface but has that satisfying economic engine ticking away underneath. Once you get going, you realise each turn matters. The game ends sooner than you think, so decisions feel tight and important. The multiuse cards add a layer of strategy that I really enjoy. You need to work out which ones to sacrifice for coins, which to play for points, and how to balance that as the game speeds towards the finish.
Some of the small issues we had with the game are easy to tweak with house rules. In two-player games, we found that turning four customers into regulars happened a bit too quickly, so now we play to five. It gives us more time to build our tableaus and enjoy the combos. The same goes for the shared marketplace. Drawing only from the four face-up cards adds tension, but if you prefer a bit of luck and chaos, adding a blind draw option works just fine. It doesn’t break the game at all.
Café Baras isn’t just a whimsical capybara-filled card game; it’s a clever little puzzle that delivers satisfying combos and decisions. It’s accessible for families but still gives gamers something to chew on. Plus, with different special guests each game, you’ll always find new ways to build your café to meet the changing demands, especially when they’re handing out six points at a time.
If you love coffee, card games and capybaras, this is an easy one to recommend. Orders up!
* Sophie is a gamer, blogger, podcaster, and book lover with a passion for solo narrative video games. When she’s not immersed in games or writing, she’s probably out hiking. Her favourite board games feature worker placement, nature themes, and smart tableau-building mechanics.
Zatu Review Summary
Zatu Score
78%
