Description
Coffee Roaster is a solitaire pool-building game. You choose a variety of coffee beans you want to roast, and put a number of tokens specific to that variety into a bag. Each turn, you draw a number of bean tokens randomly from the bag to advance their roast level. When you are finished, you make a cup-testing to check the taste of your coffee and score points accordingly. Each variety has its own target roast level, but approaching the target is not enough for perfect roasting; you also have to even out the roast level of each bean, while not spoiling the flavor of that variety.
You also have to screen out smoke tokens and burnt bean tokens that hinder your roasting, and reject bean tokens that spoil the taste. It is important to control the contents of your bag utilizing flavor effects and unique effects caused by placing tokens on the roast board.
There are 22 varieties of beans in the game. In one game, you try to roast three of them, and your roaster title is awarded based on the total score. Enjoy the world of coffee-roasting, and aim for the ultimate title "Meister".
Coffee Roaster Review – with Liz Davidson
How the game works
The player works a coffee roaster to make flavorful coffee. Tokens are placed in a cloth bag and each turn tokens are pulled out to represent continued roasting. As a coffee roaster you must determine the best time to stop the roast to hit the target roast level and produce the most flavorful coffee.
Advancing the Roast
The cloth bag represents the coffee roaster that the player is manipulating. Toss in the starting tokens and let’s go! Over time the roaster gets hotter and hotter. Therefore each turn the number of tokens that you pull from the bag also gradually increases.
Each coffee bean token among the tokens pulled from the bag will rise 1 (sometimes 2) roast levels. The water trapped in the bean will slowly evaporate away, but eventually smoke will find it’s way into the roast and over-roasting can lead to worthless, burnt beans. Managing the roast level by using all the tools at your disposal is a must.
Body, Acidity, Aroma
The 22 varieties of coffee beans appearing in Coffee Roaster are hand picked from the most well-known beans from all over the world. Each individual variety has special flavor characteristics represented by Body, Acidity, and Aroma flavor tokens, each one possessing unique flavor effects. Using these flavor effects skillfully can help you manipulate how the roast progresses. Each bean brings its own unique characteristics and flavor which influence how it can be played and effects scoring.
The Roast Board’s Unique Effect Tokens
You can earn special abilities by placing tokens on the Roast Board. The Roast Board is sectioned into 2 parts. The left side effects generally happen immediately while on the right side you can earn tokens that are used during the cup test.
Tokens from the bag can be directly placed on the left side, to place on the right side, however, the Flavor Effect (Concentration, Preservation or Dispersion) must first be used. Using Flavor Effects acts as opening moves that will support the strategies that flow into the end game.
Smoke will appear when the player reaches the spaces with the smoke symbol on it. Normally a bean will rise 1 roast level, but on these smoke spaces each bean rises 2 levels. It’s a very important part of roasting known in the coffee scene as ‘crack’. Factoring in this peculiarity of roasting, and managing the overall condition of the roast quickly becomes important.
Earning Points through the Cup Test
The Cup Test awaits you after the roasting. It’s time to taste how well you’ve brought the raw coffee into a drinkable delicacy. Score is awarded for a variety of aspects, including roast points (getting near the target roast level), flavor points (preserving the beans particular flavor), and skill points (keeping an even roast).
Earn a Rank at Game End
When you finish roasting a bean then you can write down your score on the Roasting Score Sheet. How well you roast one bean influences the next bean you will roast. In one game you will roast 3 beans. The total of those 3 challenges will determine your skill as a coffee roaster. You will receive one of 8 ranks between ‘Apprentice Roaster’ and ‘Meister’.
Can you become a first-class coffee roaster, who can coax out the most flavor from any bean? In the short version players practice with just one bean type and it takes about 10 minutes.
A Blend of Luck and Tactics
Coffee Roaster is a game more about planning how to strategically control the roast than about dealing with the luck that comes with the tokens pulled from the bag. Knowing what’s in the bag and making good use of all the different effects, and finally taking on the Cup Test is the point of the game.
In the Cup Test you take 10 tokens from the bag and measure their total roast level, but during roasting you influenced the types and number of flavor and bean tokens, as well as during the Cup Test determining which tokens to include in the cup and how many tokens you can remove all play a role in the final Cup Test. How you manage the contents of the bag is what is called the “Bag-Building” element of the game.
Savor the delicious flavors of coffee as you enjoy the rich blend of luck and strategic elements in this tactical game.