Coffee Rush Review
I used to love coffee but I took it to the extreme. I realised when you can’t sleep because of the caffeine running through your veins, only to require a shot of espresso to kickstart your day, you’re having too much of a good thing! So, I’m a tea drinker now and George Clooney won’t persuade me otherwise!
Why am I sharing my caffeine journey? Honestly, I don’t know! It just kinda fit with an introduction to the board game review of Coffee Rush in my head. I probably should’ve just asked if you’d ever dreamt of serving coffees in your own board game café or something! Nevermind, what’s done is done, on with the review…
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Setup
Place the Ingredient Board within easy reach of all players alongside the ingredient trays. Each player takes three cups, a player board with upgrade tiles in their colour placed face down. A meeple and two or three cards depending on who is the starting player. As you can tell, setup of Coffee Rush can be literally done in a rush!
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Gameplay
Over the course of the game players will be gathering ingredients by moving their meeple around the central board with the aim of fulfilling the orders on the cards beside their player board. However, there is a kicker in Coffee Rush: for every card you complete, the following players have to take that many cards onto their order queue beside their player board.
There are Speciality menu cards that are trickier to complete as the required ingredients are more spread out. Completing these, gives you a Rush Token that allows you to move one more space on a future turn, which will garner more ingredients. Additionally, for every three orders completed, a player can flip one of their activation bonus tiles over and start using its special power.
Ingredients are stored in your cup, and once mixed you cannot take single ingredients out, thematically that works too! You can however, throw the entire cup away and start again from scratch.
Once you have taken ingredients and fulfilled as many orders as possible, any incomplete cards get moved down the side of the player board. If they were in the lowest slot that customer gets properly miffed and leaves your store. Their order card becomes a penalty card.
The game ends when the draw pile is depleted with all players having a final turn until play returns to the start player. Scores can then be calculated. Players will get one point (called ‘Rating’ in the game) for every completed order card, two points for each upgraded tile activated and minus one point for each penalty card. Most points wins!
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Two player variant
There is a two player variant that differs because you have two meeples on the ingredient board, although you can only move one at a time. Also, after moving cards down, you add an additional card to your first row to speed the game along.
What it’s like
Coffee Rush isn’t intended to be a relaxing experience. If you have played the video game Overcooked, you will know that this type of game is meant to be slightly stressful. Seeing orders pile up on the side of your player board won’t be for everyone. I suppose the biggest gripe for me is, I see the orders building up, but because I have to wait for my turn that feeling of being rushed doesn’t prevail. Instead I can carefully plan the optimal ingredient haul before my turn. This is only scuppered if someone else’s meeple ends up unpredictably on my finishing space on the shared Ingredient Board. You see, Meeples can pass through one another but not end their turn on the same space.
There is also a huge amount of luck involved in the draw of the cards, for this reason I do adopt the optional rule of Espresso and Ristretto cards being on the first row during setup as offered in the rulebook.
The game is super easy to understand, and is quite a breeze to teach. Its fun but quite light and arguably a bit repetitive. That said, you’ll be having fun for the thirty minutes you’ll be playing for.
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Table Presence
Coffee Rush is a gorgeous production! The see-through cups are adorable, as are the little ingredients you can place inside them. It’s a really nice touch that these are stored in component trays included. My fat fingers make getting these ingredients out challenging at times, but I don’t think that is to the detriment of the game. However, it is off putting gathering the ingredients for a card you are going to complete immediately as they all get put back in their slots straight away.
The meeples are cute too with their little Barista aprons, I’m surprised that that only for two player games an extra meeple is only provided for pink and blue. Those with a preferred colour of green or yellow are going to be mighty disappointed at two players!
I really like the artwork too! I think the Rush tokens could’ve been improved but they are still fine.
The rulebook was super and articulated everything really nicely. The insert it all packs away into is also really nicely thought out.
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Final thoughts on Coffee Rush
Coffee Rush is somewhat of a novelty. There is certainly a degree of style over substance as the cute components overshadow the rather light and luck-based gameplay. It’s equally not as tense as it should be. I know some people say it’s stressful but they have clearly never played the game Stay Cool! Perhaps Coffee Rush should’ve been a real time game to get the heart beating faster!
Candidly, if this was styled differently or had an alternative resource gathering theme, I’m not sure you would be reading the review!
None of that is to say this game isn’t fun, I enjoy playing it and if someone popped round and wanted to play it, we would get it to the table. I could see it excelling in a board game café with players new to the hobby being lured in with a new experience and gorgeous components. I think more seasoned gamers will tire of it and it will be a game that potentially gathers dust on the shelf!
Key Facts
Number of players: 2 to 4
Board Game Review Recommended Age: 8+
Publisher’s Recommended Age: 8+
Playing Time: 30 minutes
Setting Up and Take Down Time: 1 minute
Designers: Eujon Han
Publisher: Korea Board Games
RRP: £33.99
Summary
Coffee Rush is bang average in terms of gameplay, yet beautiful. A fun novelty for the lighter board gamer.
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Artwork and Components
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Complexity
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Instructions
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Interaction
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Value for Money
Overall
Pros
- Adorable components
- Coffee shop theme
- Similarity to Overcooked
- May not be as stressful as you think
- Family friendly
Cons
- Quite luck based
- Fairly repetitive
- Moderately stressful
- Style over substance
- Only pink and blue meeples available for two player games
Need more games?
If you already own Coffee Rush and enjoy it, or are looking for other inspiration, you might also like these similar games:
- Flamecraft
- Juicy Fruits
- Splendor
- Noctiluca
Buy Coffee Rush
If you want to buy Coffee Rush after reading our review click on one of our affiliate links below (note there has been no affiliate links until this point)
Reviewer’s Note
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