Macaraccoon
- Board's Eye View
- Aug 26
- 3 min read
There's an entire sub-genre of games themed around cafés run by cute woodland animals. Macaraccoon is the latest. In this game, designed by Zain Memon and published by Memesys Culture Lab, the 2-5 players are working in a patisserie, fulfilling orders as they compete to earn the most candy hearts.
The orders are cards in two rows, so there will be six visible at all times. The two cards each represent a queue of customers, so you need to pay a sugar cube to placate a customer waiting first in line if you fulfil an order that's not at the head of a queue.
Fulfilling orders earns you candy hearts (victory points) and you do this by assembling the ingredients illustrated on an order card. That means a base, spread(s) and toppings. The ingredients are on transparent cards, so you can see all the layers, and on your turn, you can take from the kitchen board any ingredient card that's orthogonally adjacent to the empty space on the board. That means you'll be creating a new empty space and you fill the original empty space with your choice of ingredients in a pantry display. This sliding tile drafting presents players with a puzzle as each will try to optimise their drafting, ideally with an eye to what competitors need and keeping the empty space away from those other players' preferred ingredients. The tactics here can prove critical because it's very likely that two or more players may be working towards the same order card but only the first to complete an order will be able to claim it. Tho' it's a family game, don't let the cute theme and art from Anna Daviscourt, Gokul Prasad and Divya Jain lull you into a false sense of security: Macaraccoon can be quite a cutthroat competitive game!
There's a challenge too as players manage their own individual countertops. The ingredients they draft must be placed on one of the three plates on their countertop but, to complete an order, the ingredients must be presented in the right order (ie: base at the bottom, spreads above them and toppings on top). If you're very lucky you might be able to pick up your ingredients in exactly the right order but more often than not that won't be possible and so you'll have to juggle them Tower-of-Hanoi style. If another player gets in ahead of you to complete an order for which you were going, then in order to remain in competition for one of the other orders in the queues you could well find you end up having to dump some of your previously collected ingredients!
You can earn sugar cubes from completed orders as well as candy hearts. The sugar cubes aren't worth points but they give you access to special abilities. Aside from fulfilling orders further down the queue, you can spend sugar to give yourself a Sugar Rush and immediately take an extra turn: again that could prove critical in beating an opponent to claim a contested order. Players can also call on the Critter Chefs for assistance - paying their cost in order to activate their powers. And for each of the animal types among the Critter Chef cards, Memesys Culture Lab have had some fun devising confectionary-themed variations; so prepare to encounter the Jellyphant, Pandacotta, Porcupie and Otterscotch, in addition to the eponymous Macaraccoon.
Macaraccoon is coming to Kickstarter on 2 September. Click here for the campaign page.
