Cuteness goes a fairly long way when it comes to getting a board game onto the table in our household, so it was a fairly easy sell for us to check out Critter Kitchen, the new adorable title from the same team that created the also-adorable dragon-centric Flamecraft a few years back. Where that dragon game had you moving between shops, gathering enchantments and resources, Critter Kitchen instead focuses on cute animals collecting ingredients so that they can open the tastiest restaurant in town.
Considering its colourful, cozy presentation, it has a decent amount of strategic depth, as you and your opponents jostle to be the best anthropomorphic beasty chef you can be.
In a concept that is just as sweet as the familiar Flamecraft art style from artist Sandara Tang, Critter Kitchen is celebrating Restaurant Week in Bistro Bay, and restaurants are competing in food challenges while planning an epic meal to impress a celebrity critic coming to town. As one of up to 5 players, you’ll send your Chefs out into the city to gather ingredients so that you can show that your restaurant is the best in town.
It’s a familiar, simple-sounding concept, but the added wrinkle that gives Critter Kitchen an edge is that in each round, new random ingredients are placed throughout various locations in town, and you have to secretly plan which locations to send your three chefs to, hoping to get the best ones. Choosing where to send each chef has an impact on what ingredients you’ll collect, so it’s about racing other players; for example, your smallest mouse chef is fast, and will get first pick at a location, but can only carry one ingredient at a time. Other larger chefs, like the boar, can hold more but arrive later. This secret choice is always tense; you need to go after the ingredients you want the most, but you won’t know what the other players are going for, which could completely stuff up your turn if you’re not careful.
“When a much-wanted ingredient goes onto a location, everybody’s eyes in our group lit up.”
In each of the first six rounds, there is a challenge dish, which means you can earn stars by crafting dishes that meet those specific ingredient requirements. This all culminates in a wild final round, where in round 7 you have to create an epic meal to impress a celebrity critic, by offering multiple courses that are to their tastes.
This celebrity critic looms large over the game, but what they’re interested in is kept secret; that is, unless, you focus on collecting some rumours instead of ingredients, which allows you to reveal one of the three hidden requirements they have.
It’s all deliciously clever, and learning how to best maximise each food location, while also accounting for a solid plan B (and C, and D, etc) based on what your opponents choose to do makes for a tactical delight. While core locations have regular ingredients randomly placed, the Soup Truck means you can essentially grab bisque and soup as a sort of wild ingredient to replace any other you’re missing, the Midnight Merchant has secret ingredients that stay hidden until that location begins to be resolved, making it a lucky dip of sorts, and the Chef’s Academy allows you to temporarily hire a bonus chef for use in the following round, giving you another ingredient-collector with a special ability. On top of that, any un-collected ingredients from other locations end up at the Chef’s Academy, so as the last location to be resolved, it can end up with some tasty options to choose from.
The balance of collecting ingredients and preparing meals while competing with your friends in Critter Kitchen feels devilish when you manage to achieve the perfect plate. Ingredients all have number values, and you can use ingredients multiple times to stack scores, with spices serving as multipliers. You’ll want to bank points in each round with the challenge meals, making sure that you are factoring in the critic’s meal in round 7; in that round, you can only use one ingredient of each type across a seven-course meal, with bonuses for achieving all seven. In each of our plays, when a much-wanted ingredient goes onto a location, everybody’s eyes in our group lit up. Do I go for it? Or will everybody else go for it too? It’s high risk, high reward, and a lot of fun.
Turn order is constantly changing throughout the game, and the regular need to adapt and change plans based on your opponents makes for a surprisingly strategic and fast-paced time. The fact that rumours, critics and restauranteurs are different for every game means that this has a lot of replayability, too.
While Critter Kitchen might have a simple concept, it’s executed in such a compelling way that we all felt incredibly satisfied by the time we were revealing our final dishes to the group. Combined with a vibrant art style, well-made components and a whole lot of variety, it’s an easy recommendation, building on the success of Flamecraft and adding more than enough twists that it absolutely stands on its own as a strong addition to any board game collection.
Critter Kitchen is available now in all good board game stores. Thanks to VR Distribution for providing a copy for this review.
About the Author
Luke Mitchell
he/him
Luke spends his time making radio, playing video games, binge-watching TV, getting unreasonably invested in wrestling, hosting bear events and hanging out with his beautiful pets.
