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The aroma of freshly brewed coffee wafting on the breeze. The clink of cups as your customers enjoy their coffee and maybe a slice of cake or pie. This is the life of a barista, someone skilled in the art of coffee making. The city of Berlin is the home of your modest coffee shop and the diverse public wandering the streets are your potential customers. From hipsters to tourists, musicians to students and even the occasional board game geek are all potential customers needing to be satisfied with various types of coffee, milk, cake and pastries.
Seize the Bean is a 1-4 player deck builder about serving coffee in a Berlin coffee shop. It has elements of resource management, card drafting, set collection, engine building and a modular set-up. Players take on the role of barista competing to get the most positive reviews by the end of the game.
They do this by serving their customers varying different types of resources (coffee, milk, cake, pastries). There are also sets of pantry cards and style cards which relate to the customer groups selected, offering a wealth of replay-ability.
Gameplay
The heart of the game (and any good coffee shop for that matter) is its customer base. In Seize the Bean there are 25+ different customer groups. Depending on the player count only six or seven groups will be played with at any one time. Each customer group has a related set of style and pantry cards. The replay-ability is high in this game.
Seize the Bean is a deck builder about serving customers various types of coffee, milk, cake and pastries. Players build up their customer base by acquiring new customer cards and adding them in to their deck and attempting to serve them in future rounds. The player board, which represents the player's coffee shop, can be upgraded with various pantry upgrades (giving more resource options) and style upgrades (which give the players unique abilities and bonuses).
The player board has various worker placement actions that can be activated, and the pantry and style upgrade cards become extensions to these spots, making them more powerful as the game progress. If a customer’s basic needs are not met they become angry, eventually the customer will give you a bad review. However, if their basic needs are met the customer triggers a specific ability. If the customers main order and side order is met, then the customer is happy and will give you good review.
Initial Thoughts on Seize the Bean
Seize the Bean grabbed my attention as soon as I saw a preview. The game involves multiple mechanics; resource management, card drafting, set collection, engine building and modular set-up. Resource management, engine building and modular set-up are three of my favourite mechanics in a game. The way the designers have brought all these together just seems to work, resulting in a very exciting game.
The theme feels strong in the game, with the customer group, pantry and style upgrade all knitting together. If you want to attract musicians to your coffee shop then upgrading the style of your coffee shop to hold an open mic will help with that. The artwork that I have seen is bright and colourful and just looks great. The game comes with over 25 different customer groups with only six or seven being picked for any one game. The replay-ability is off the charts.
The resources are life size coffee beans and sugar cubes with miniature milk cartons, all made from resin, and look amazing. The player boards are dual layer to keep everything neat and tidy during the game play and look amazing. The game comes with a solo variant which is another tick for me.
The gameplay, the component quality, and the mechanics all make it just stand out as a quality designed, developed and manufactured game. The original release date for Seize the Bean was Sept 2018, but this has been delayed to February 2019, which is a shame but not unexpected with a Kickstarter campaign that has had so much extra content unlocked.
The main delay is due to all the extra artwork that needs drawing. However, I am still super excited for this and can’t wait till next year. I just hope that there are not any more delays in getting this to backers.