Barbecubes: A Portable Feast with Small Steaks

Can you fit each item on the barbecue without dropping anything into the coals? This tiny dexterity game challenges your steady hand as you try to cram the grill with meats without causing a backyard disaster.

Barbecubes is published by Alley Cat Games, designed for 2-6 players, and has a 3-15 minute playtime.

Gameplay

The two grill pieces are laid across the empty, open part of the game tin. On a player’s turn he draws a card. This says which food piece he has to put on the grill and how many bars of the grill it must touch. It also says whether he has to use his non-dominant hand. The player then uses the plastic tongs to try to add the piece to the grill.

If a piece that was already on the grill falls off, or the piece the player is adding falls into the tin, he takes the card. If a player ever collects two cards, he is eliminated from the game. The last player standing is the winner — or, if all the cards run out, all players still in the game win together.

Review

Barbecubes is a straightforward dexterity game. As you can see, the rules can be explained in just a few sentences. This is easy to get on the table and start playing. Fitting neatly all in a tin and with little extra play space required, it’s also quite portable and something you can easily play at a restaurant or at a small table.

The components are excellent, and the game pieces are, especially the food, delightful. But there didn’t feel like much variety between dexterity challenges. Turns felt mostly the same. There is a bit of fun escalation as the grill gets increasingly full, and players have to start nudging pieces to make room for new ones, but it still didn’t feel like much variety in the challenges themselves, as posed by the cards.

We’ve played a couple of these tin games from Alley Cat Games (Tinderblox and Tic Tac Trek). It’s a fun game line, and we’ve enjoyed them all, but this is probably the weakest of the three we’ve tried. It’s still enjoyable, with nice components, but it didn’t impress us as much as the others. It’s a fun, light, quick game, and certainly is enjoyable, but it doesn’t have a lot of staying power.

Pros: Very compact, easy to teach, excellent components

Cons: Not a lot of variety

Disclosure: we received a complimentary review copy of this game.