Café del Gatto is an exciting board game that immerses you in the world of coffee preparation, in a cat bar where you play the charista and have to serve demanding customers! Very sweet, with milk, rather hot, rather cold. You will have to compose the ideal drink while juggling other orders and preventing your opponents from winning the best customers.
Imagine running your own cafe, making Espressos, Cappuccinos and Latte Macchiatos to satisfy your customers and build your reputation, all in one game with a super simple mechanics and magnificent equipment!
The mechanics of Café del Gatto
The heart of the game lies in the choice between buying coffee tiles or milk tiles each turn. It may sound simple, but that’s where the strategy comes in. On a vertical display, a stack of coffee tiles faces a stack of milk tiles. Each tile has a value which is reflected in the pile opposite.
For example: if, in front of my coffee tile, which is worth 1, I have a milk tile with a value of 4, buying this milk tile only costs me one coin, but earns me four coffee value points. On the other hand, if I bought the coffee tile in this example, it would cost me four coins for an unfortunate point of coffee value. An unwise choice.
This unique and perfectly fun system also allows each purchase to change the value of the milk and coffee tiles thanks to the fact that each pile is automatically filled after a purchase. But so you just have to hurry up and buy the big tiles to win?
Well no ! Because if it is interesting to make “high value” coffees to receive the best rewards, we are above all in a race, where everyone tries above all to make good coffees, but above all coffees that we can serve quickly. And a cafe fills from the bottom first, so if you’re unlucky, you might only have expensive tiles facing the ones that earn the most points. So what do we do in these cases? We fall back on coffees and milks that are available and we rush to fill orders because we don’t want to see the best rewards pass us by!
Afterwards, there is always the possibility of earning a lot of money and rushing to the best tiles by paying the price, if we manage to make coffees that have a good consistency. Those which are completely iced, or completely hot, thanks to icons on the coffee and milk tiles which can be a second parameter to take into account.
You see, a simple game full of strategic possibilities.
My opinion on Café del Gatto
One of the really cool things about Café del Gatto is the interaction between players. You will have to constantly monitor what your opponents are doing, as the game may end sooner than you think. This competition adds an exciting and social element to the game and allows it to be extremely effective with families or friends, whether we like to play occasionally or very often.
Moreover, the game is superbly illustrated and the components are of high quality, which adds to the immersion. The material is very pleasant to handle and there is a real pleasure in filling your little cups of coffee. The game immediately transports you to the cozy atmosphere of a cat bar and you can almost smell the aroma of freshly brewed coffee. In café del gatto you will really feel like you are in a cafe preparing these delicious drinks. The only small downside would be the interior storage of the box which is not optimal.
Furthermore, a great strength of the game comes from the fact that it is above all an abstract game, even if, as we have just seen, the design is so successful that this little café is really credible. run by cats! But precisely, like any good abstract game (think chess, trick games or quarto), its simplicity is such that we don’t notice the time passing and we are immediately ready to play one again!
Whether you are a seasoned gamer or new to board games, Café del Gatto offers an entertaining and engaging experience. Its adorable and original theme mixed with very simple mechanics and thrilling exchanges ensures it a certain place in any good personal game library. So, get ready to become the best charista in the region and enjoy thrilling games around the table!
