Review: THE GREAT BRITISH BAKING SHOW: THE GAME Needed a Bit More Time in the Oven
The Great British Baking Show is an extremely fun and popular reality show to watch. Over the course of several weeks, 12 amateur bakers go head to head competing for the honor of winning the season. The show offers some amazing camaraderie among the contestants and it can just be really fun to see these people compete. Recently, Ravensburger offered everyone the chance to feel a part of the show as they launched The Great British Baking Show: The Game. It’s available now at your local game store or anywhere else that you like to buy board games with an MSRP of $19.99. Ravensburger was kind enough to send me a sample to review and the thoughts below are my own.
On your marks, get set…bake! In The Great British Baking Show: The Game, players race to recreate the configuration of baking cards shown on the recipe. Choose whether to move quickly at all costs, or whether to take more time to select the best flavors for their bake.
Let’s get through some logistics first. The Great British Baking Show: The Game is rated for 2-4 players ages 10+. As you start the game, the players must agree on what category of food they’ll be baking: bread, dessert, biscuit, etc. Once that is settled, you’ll need to get your deck ready and lay out the appropriate timer tokens. Then, someone will count down and the madness begins. The game is played simultaneously meaning there are no turns, it’s just a mad dash. You’ll flip through your deck one card at a time looking for the ones that match the recipe card of the current round (there are 3 rounds per game: signature, technical, and showstopper). When the second to last person is done, the round ends and points are scored. This game is very simple and very fast.
Overall, the game works pretty well. The pieces look good and have great art. The concept is fun. Overall, the execution is okay. The general gameplay is fine but there are two areas that really could use some adjustments. First, the mechanic of the bin. Each player has a bin that allows them once per round to discard any number of cards that they’ve played. In theory this sounds like a good idea as you can aim for completing your bake even if it’s just a Soggy Bottom. However, in practice, me and my group always forgot about it and could only think of one time where it may have been helpful.
The other area is how the end of the round works. So with rules as written, you will have 1-3 green timer tokens that are claimed by the first 1-3 players who finish their bakes and then the last player gets the red timer token. When the last green token is taken, the last player has to stop playing cards from their deck and is allowed to try to finish their bake using the top cards from their 3 discard piles. Then, scoring commences. In order to score any points besides the 1 red token point, you must complete the bake. This can often result in players receiving just 1 point per round while the other players often get 5+ points. My group and I didn’t like the way this worked out and so we modified it. Here’s what we did:
When the last green timer token is taken, the last player must stop.
The last player then plays any and all cards possible from the tops of the discard piles.
If the bake is still not complete, the player may flip through their deck and must use the first legal card they draw to fill each empty spot.
If the player goes through the deck and still cannot complete their bake, they do not get to shuffle their cards.
No optional cards may be played after the last green token has been taken.
We found this to be a lot more fun in general. It almost always has every player at least score Soggy Bottom (2 points) but sometimes they get Great Bakes (5 points) and if they play smart and get lucky, they can even eke out (very rarely) a Hollywood Handshake (7 points). We figure it’s akin to the other bakers helping a fellow contestant after they’ve already finished their bakes or them merely lucking out. I would recommend playing with rules as written a couple of times first and then if you don’t like it, try the method I’ve outlined and adapt to fit your group.
At the end of the day, The Great British Baking Show: The Game is a quick, simple, and fun game. It just needs a little tweaking to fit everyone’s taste. I think it would be fun if they found a way to incorporate more bakers with a mode for more of an elimination style gameplay over several games to emulate the show a bit more. I don’t want it to be the main way for the game to be played, but it would be fun as an optional ruleset.
