“Prepare, serve and sell amazing doughnuts to customers. Most tips wins!”

Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/188021/doughnut-drive-thru
Playing Time: 20-30 Minutes
Weight: Light
Genre: Worker Placement
Designer: Heiko Günther, Otama (おたま), Rinyori (りにょり)
Players: 2-4

You wouldn’t expect it from the cute little box but Doughnut Drive-Thru is one of the most cutthroatworker placement games you can play.

Image from boardgamegeek.com

It works like this. Each player has two meeples (that look like little cheerios) at the start of the game, which they use to try to prepare and serve their doughnuts (which involves rolling dice to try to hit targets on the card). But these workers are not specific to a color, and there’s no ‘reset’ event, where everyone has to take up their workers. Instead, if you’re out of meeples, you can choose an action which lets you take all the doughnut meeples from any one card.

But sometimes, you get screwed, because no single card has two meeples on it.

The result is a game that is surprisingly interactive – there are numerous ways you can mess with the guy after you and force him to have a sub-optimal turn – and this is one of those games where being cruel to someone else may actually be more fun than taking the most optimal turn for yourself. Which is fine, because the game is short and fast enough that you don’t care when you’re the target. The end result is a fun quickie game perfect for ending game night with a lot of laughs.

Image from boardgamegeek.com