AEGWaffle Time | Draft Fruit Toppings & Whipped Cream, Create Patterns Spread Syrup | Abstract Strategy Breakfast Board Game | 1-4 Players | Ages 10+

The thing I love most about this game is that the rules are simple but the strategies deep!

This game is a bit hit and miss. Some people really enjoy it while others, even in the same family, don't like it.The components are of decent quality, not exceptional, not poor. The game play is easy to learn with a few small exceptions in the weak instruction booklet.For me, the game just didn't hook me and pull me in. Maybe if your family is really into breakfast foods it might pull you in since it's an interest. Just not for me.

It’s easy to learn and teach. Fun, light weight game and definitely one I’ve enjoyed playing multiple times with different groups of people.

This is a puzzly game that should appeal to people who enjoy pattern-matching and optimization games like Calico.The goal is to score the most points by placing cream, fruit and syrup on your waffle in certain patterns. The patterns that award points will vary from game to game. Cream must go directly on your waffle, fruit can go either directly onto your waffle or on top of cream, and then syrup goes on top of the fruit.Each player starts with a waffle on which 5 creams and 2 fruits are pre-placed in spaces randomly determined based on cards that are dealt out at the beginning of the game.There is a 4 X 4 "drafting" board from which players will select fruit on their turn. On your turn, you choose a combination of the two outermost fruits and/or cream from an available row or column by placing a peg next to them. You will then take the matching tokens and place them on available spaces on your waffle.Placing fruits in certain configurations (such as three cherries in a row, or two bananas next to each other with any other fruit(s) on either side) allows you to put syrup on top of some of the fruits. When the syrup is in the patterns on the scoring cards, you earn points.The game is a bit more involved than that, but that's it in a nutshell -- a thinky puzzle in which on every turn you have to decide which pattern(s) to go for and whether to set it up to score more than one on a future turn or play it safe and grab the bonuses before everyone else.The components are great quality, but I have to question some of the choices. There are three pats of butter which are awarded to the first player to score a bonus, but the butter is exactly the same shade of yellow as the bananas. Cards that serve different functions, though they have different symbols on them, all have the exact same waffle pattern on the background. This makes it confusing the first time you play and hard to learn unless you are an experienced gamer.The rulebook, too, is a bit confusing. I play a LOT of games and when I started reading the setup I was confused. I figured it out but if I was newer to games it would be very hard to pick it up and not make mistakes. There is a reference early on to having the "rightmost" token on the turn order track, which is just inaccurate as the track moves around the board. Little things like that and the identification of which cards are which mar what is otherwise quite a nice and challenging game.I expect better from AEG, especially as it is the designer's first game.

In Waffle Time players are trying to make the tastiest waffle. All players start out with a waffle with some toppings on it. Then they take resources in a turn based way from a central board, which reminds us of another game called Juicy Fruits. This provides some player interaction, and seeds the player turn order for the next round. Each player gets to make a selection which will give them 2 toppings. The player then places those on their waffle to try and get bonuses based on orientation of the toppings. After 8 turns, points are tallied, and whoever has the most points wins.One of our kids really liked this game. She enjoyed the spatial puzzle element of deciding where to put the toppings, the way you chose toppings from the central board, and the idea of making a waffle. Our other kid did not enjoy the game. He mostly did not like the restrictions on placing toppings, and thought some of the rules, mostly the blueberry rules, were kind of hard to figure out. In his defense, this is the one caveat I had also. One of the blueberry cards was a bit of a hard concept to grasp.If you like games like Azul or Juicy Fruits, you'll probably enjoy this game as well. We're keeping it because it's simple enough that we should be able to watch TV while we play it, but the variable bonuses and topping rules haven enough variety to keep it interesting for a while. It gets 3 stars, because the kid that didn't like it really did have some valid points. Of course, restricting how the toppings are placed is also why the rest of us liked the game. I probably would give this 3.5 stars if I could.

This is a game I recommend especially for those looking to get into playing games but not wanting to be overwhelmed by the more complex world of board games (lookin' at you, Battlestar Galactica and your 500 expansions!).Fun, simple, and easy to learn, Waffle Time is definitely a hit!