Preview: Feed Your Opponents to Knock Them Out in Food Coma

Cook up custards, flapjacks, pad thai, and maybe even the fabled coma burger, all in a quest to satiate your opponents and send them into a food coma!

Currently on Kickstarter, Food Coma is a fast-playing, take-that card game full of food, chefs, and grocery stores.

Gameplay

Each player takes turns choosing a chef card. Each chef has a unique ability such as being able to look at the top card of a deck before drawing, or eating a meal that contains a sugar ingredient card allowing you to draw from the grocery store deck. After you have your chef, you set the counter of that chef’s calorie tracker to zero.

There are four decks of cards. Three of them represent different stores: the grocery store, the farmer’s market, and the butcher shop. The final deck is the food coma cards which have powerful special abilities. There are five different types of ingredients; you can get all of them from the grocery store deck, three of them at the farmer’s market, and the other two at the butcher shop. Every card from the farmer’s market also adds an additional 100 calories to a dish, while butcher shop cards add 200. However, when drawing from the grocery store, you draw three cards, from the market two cards, and from the butcher shop only one.

On a typical turn, you start by choosing to play cards to create a dish and giving that dish to another player. Each player has a menu that shows what combinations of cards make which dishes, and how many calories each dish is worth. Dishes can be made of 2-4 cards (although there is a special 5card burger that takes one of each ingredient, is worth 1,000 calories, and is unblockable). You can skip making a dish, however you must always draw at the end of your turn and there is a hand limit of six, so if you are already at six cards you must play a dish.

The player who gets the dish increases his calorie tracker the appropriate amount. There are some special cards in the store decks that allow you to block dishes, however. Cards used in a dish are always discarded. The active player can create multiple dishes but must play them on different players. Finally, a turn ends with the active player choosing one of the three store decks to draw from.

When your calorie tracker reaches three different milestones, you get to draw a food coma card. Each of these can be played for a one-time special ability, such as allowing you to take two turns in a row or making a dish unblockable.

If you reach the end of your calorie tracker, you flip your chef card over to the full side. If you eat even one calorie more, you are out of the game. The last player left in the game wins.

Review

Food Coma is a light take-that card game, full of puns, a nifty little mechanism of cooking up dishes, and some light strategy of choosing when to play and when to hold out for more calorie-heavy dishes. It’s light, silly (intentionally so), and fun.

There's a lot of back and forth action in the game, plenty of player interaction, and the food coma cards offer a clever catch-up mechanism. The game plays quite fast, and this fits well with these mechanics. Things get close and the last chance after your chef is flipped can be exciting as the game nears its end and multiple players are close to being knocked from the game. Also, given the short length of the game, the fact that players are eliminated is not an issue.

As with most take-that games, the more players the better, as you have more people to play cards on, and it’s not simply a battle between two people. You have to assess the calorie totals of each player, and, of course, who just served you up a dish themselves!

The artwork is quite a unique style. We didn’t especially enjoy the pictures of the full chefs, but did appreciate all the puns and the use of flavor text on all the ingredient cards. The menus are also a nice component touch, both providing the recipes as well as a quick reference of what you can find in the three store decks.

If you enjoy light and fast take-that games, Food Coma is a nicely designed one. The way the dishes work, you can always play something as long as you’ve got at least two cards in your hand, so you always have choices on your turn and always feel involved in the game, while the special ability cards keep things just a little unpredictable. Check it out on Kickstarter and see if it’s the dish for you!

Pros: Light and fast, range of unique cards and flavor text, you always have choices each turn

Cons: Some of the artwork may not appeal to all players

Disclosure: this preview is based on our evaluation of an unpublished prototype of the game, which is subject to change prior to publication. While a modest payment was received to expedite the review process, our thoughts and opinions expressed here are honest and accurate.