Sneaky Supper
- Board's Eye View
- 2 hours ago
- 2 min read
The premise for Sneaky Supper is that it's the middle of the night, you're hungry and you want to grab something to eat but without waking up other people. This game from Steve Ng and Capital Gains Studio then is an ingredients set collection game built around a push-your-luck mechanic.
Players each have a card representing the meal they particularly crave but there are nine recipe options also available in a display. Your craved meal will require a combination of very specific ingredients but most of the options in the display have slightly looser demands - specifying, for example, three different protein ingredients. However, all the meals in the display demand a utensil; a utensil can come up in the ordinary deck but there is a separate utensils deck from which you can choose to take a card. The challenge is that each card will show the noise made. Some ingredient and utensil cards make no noise at all but others show 1, 2, 3 or 4 noise, and there are several cards in the deck that represent accidents and mishaps that generate noise but without giving you an ingredient! You can keep drawing cards up to the maximum of seven and you can stop at any time, take all the cards into your hand and cash them in to claim recipes. However, if your noise total hits 4, you are bust. In that instance, other players get to take their pick of one of the cards drawn and you just get one if there's one left. You do, however, get to take a token by way of consolation: a useful catch-up mechanic because the tokens can be traded in to negate the noise of any card, even after it would otherwise have made you go bust, or it can be used to substitute for any ingredient.
The craved meals and displayed recipes all have stated points values, unused tokens are each worth a point and some snack ingredients have a points value if you simply trade them in. The game ends when a player hits or exceeds 20 points; tho' other players get a further turn so being first to 20 doesn't necessarily guarantee you the win.
This all makes for a light, fun push-your-luck game. At the end of your turn you can only ever carry forward a maximum of four cards, so if you don't have a combination that meets the requirements of a meal card you could well end up having to trade in snack cards for their points value or just discard cards for no reward. It can be very frustrating! Designer Steve Ng clearly recognises this, however, and invites players as an option to adopt a rule that allows any two ingredient cards to be used in place of any other ingredient. If you play with this rule you'll find it much easier to complete recipes; with games that might normally run to 20 minutes finishing in not much more than 10 minutes.
However you play, Sneaky Supper provides a satisfyingly filling filler-length snack of a game.