Game review : Wok Star

Publisher: Gabob LLC — June 2010 (1st ed)

Publisher: Gabob LLC — Q4 2010 (2nd ed)

Designer Tim Fowers is releasing his first board game, Wok Star through Gabob LLC, a company he co-owns that has previously released video games. Wok Star is a co-operative game in which players need to bring together ingredients to create recipes for customers who show up at their restaurant. The game includes two sandtimers, and each sandtimer represents a customer waiting for food. Take too long, and the customer eats for free!

The game takes place over six rounds, and at the end of each of the first five rounds players can use the cash they've earned to purchase new recipes (allowing them to serve new customers by adding those cards to the customer deck), advertise (which pulls in new customers for recipes currently offered), and upgrade preparation (to make more ingredients per action). At the start of the sixth round, their cash on hand drops to zero and the players need to earn $40-80 in that single round (depending on the number of players) in order to win the game.

Advance rules (PDF) for two and four players are available on BoardGameGeek, with rules for one and three players still to come. You can alternatively watch this video created by Gabob to both explain the game and show an example of real-time play:

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