Crumbs is a 1–2 player game which puts you behind the sandwich counter just in time for the lunchtime rush. Designed by J. Antscherl and published by Minerva Tabletop Games, this small box easily slips into a pocket, and you’ll soon be shuffling cards and laying out tokens wherever your next adventure takes you.
Prepare the Counter
In Crumbs, the 12 sandwich filler cards display salad, salmon, egg, cheese, avocado, and ham on one side, with customer orders on the other.
To start the game you’ll first pick out the starting cards from the fillers. Shuffle them and choose one at random. Then select two more cards from the deck: one that matches the filling you drew and one that is different. These three cards form your queue of customers. Stack them so that only the first order is visible.
Crumbs is a 1–2 player game which puts you behind the sandwich counter just in time for the lunchtime rush. Designed by J. Antscherl and published by Minerva Tabletop Games, this small box easily slips into a pocket, and you’ll soon be shuffling cards and laying out tokens wherever your next adventure takes you.
Prepare the Counter
In Crumbs, the 12 sandwich filler cards display salad, salmon, egg, cheese, avocado, and ham on one side, with customer orders on the other.
To start the game you’ll first pick out the starting cards from the fillers. Shuffle them and choose one at random. Then select two more cards from the deck: one that matches the filling you drew and one that is different. These three cards form your queue of customers. Stack them so that only the first order is visible.
The rest of the cards are placed filling side up. These form the ingredients available on your counter, while your bread cards are stacked nearby. Order, action and dietary tokens are placed within reach.
And that’s the entire setup.
Crumbs!
The main aim of Crumbs is to fulfil all three customer order cards. The catch is that every turn you must complete a sandwich. Turns consist of just five actions. You can assemble a sandwich, take any amount of a single ingredient and add it to your prep area, restock by returning any number of one ingredient from your pantry to the counter, or toast by flipping any bread cards in your prep area to their toasted side. Each action is simple enough, but the orders you receive certainly aren’t.
Order cards usually contain two customers, and each customer might have two sandwiches for you to complete. The hardest part of Crumbs’ optimisation puzzle is constantly thinking three turns ahead. Some sandwiches can easily be completed within five actions, but others require far more, meaning you need to start them while working on another order.
The problem? You only have a limited supply of ingredients and bread. If your bread is tied up in other orders it can halt progress entirely, and if all your cheese is used up and sitting in the pantry, you’ll need to spend an action to restock it and another to assemble it into a sandwich. With only five actions available, you’ve already spent most of them just getting one ingredient back into play. It’s relentless.
Once you’ve crushed one order card and start feeling pleased with yourself, you reveal the next order. If it contains some particularly hefty sandwiches, it can all fall apart very quickly, especially as you’ve had no chance to plan ahead before the reveal. It’s a real brain burner.
Despite its challenging nature, the game is incredibly bright and colourful, with artwork provided by Rory Muldoon. It’s the sort of game that immediately tempts you to go again. It’s so enticing and mouth-watering that by the time you finish playing you might find yourself grabbing a loaf of bread and preparing a real-life sandwich.
There are also a few nice rules that keep things manageable behind the counter. Ingredients don’t need to be placed in the exact order shown on the card, and only the top slice of bread, or the bottom slice in the case of an open sandwich, needs to match what the order requires. These small flexibilities help keep the puzzle from becoming overwhelming. On top of that, every completed sandwich gives you a free ingredient restock which can be bread or any filler, giving you a small but welcome bit of breathing room.
To add to its charm, the game includes wooden tokens to help keep track of the madness. Even though there’s no timer, the constant pressure of incoming orders creates its own sense of urgency. These tokens track completed sandwiches and orders in the shape of mini bread pieces, alongside markers for your actions and a few to monitor some rather quirky customers. But more on them later.
The game ends in one of two ways. You complete all the orders and total your score based on the difficulty rating of each customer card. Congratulations, you win. Or you fail to make a sandwich and the game simply ends.
It really is that brutal.
Who knew I would end up raging over Calvin’s order because the man wanted absolutely everything in his sandwich, and on brown bread no less. I mean seriously, Calvin, all my avocados are in the pantry!
Extra Fillings
Now Crumbs isn’t an easy game, but there are probably some people out there who are so good at optimisation puzzles that they might want an extra challenge. Thankfully this Sandwich Filler Game has you covered. There are optional rules you can add in, including quirky customer symbols that introduce dietary requirements. These customers may be allergic to certain ingredients, meaning that once you start making their sandwiches you can’t use that ingredient again until their entire order is complete. This can make it incredibly difficult to look after two customers at once.
On top of that there are several other customers with their own quirks. The Particular Patron wants all the fillings arranged in the exact order shown on the card. Speedy Serving means you must serve that customer a sandwich every single turn until their order is complete. Stock Shortage will have you removing a filling from the game that is currently sitting in your pantry. These additional rules really do take the challenge up another level and force you to rethink how you manage your already limited resources.
What I really enjoy about Crumbs is that it includes a co-op mode which doesn’t feel tacked on at all. It’s a mode where you have to talk through the puzzle together. My customer needs toasted bread, yours needs all the eggs, suddenly you’re rationing ingredients and planning every move as a team.
Each player has their own customers and their own counter, while the ingredients are split evenly at the beginning of the game. This means you may need to use an assemble action to pass ingredients over to your partner’s counter, adding even more pressure to the already tight five action limit. Each player must also complete a sandwich every turn, and instead of a free ingredient restock you only receive a free restock on bread. Still, that’s better than nothing.
Final Thoughts
Crumbs’ gameplay is fast paced, challenging and mouth-watering. For such a small game it really packs a punch. I think I’ve only successfully beaten the game once, and that was in co-op. It's genuinely difficult to master, but still hugely fun to try and figure out.
My only real gripe with Crumbs is that some endings to the game can feel a little unsatisfying. Quite often it’s possible to look at an order card and immediately realise that you can’t fulfil it with the ingredients available. When that happens there’s little point even attempting it, which can feel quite deflating. There’s nothing in your strategic arsenal that can save you. No extra move, no clever workaround.
Because the customer cards are hidden in the queue you can also be playing the perfect game, only for the next reveal to completely ruin your plans. If that new customer demands ingredients you’ve already committed elsewhere, your careful preparation suddenly falls apart. At times this can make the game feel a little luck dependent, even though that unpredictability is clearly part of the design. When you’re so close to winning it can still feel pretty disheartening.
Despite its small, compact size, Crumbs has a lovely table presence and is also fantastic to travel with. It’s the sort of game you can easily pull out when you have a spare fifteen minutes. The theme is fun, and it feels like something that could easily be expanded in the future with extra order cards to mix things up. After many plays, you may begin to see familiar order combinations, which makes the idea of future expansion cards quite appealing.
In many ways it reminds me of a more compact version of Coffee Rush, another order fulfilment game that brings both the stress and the satisfaction.
If you enjoy optimisation puzzles and sandwiches, Crumbs is a game you really can’t go wrong with.
About the Author
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.
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