Chocolate brioche with a chocolate milkshake for breakfast. Chocolate spread and bacon sarnies for lunch. Chipotle and chocolate chicken stew with chocolate cake for tea. Sounds like just an average day in our house, what with us all being massive choccy hogs and all! If you like your delicious treats on your table as well as on your plate, we are here to help you celebrate Chocolate Day which takes place in the US on 28th October!
Grab your drawstring trousers, pop the lid on that tub of choccies you have banked for Christmas (there’s plenty of time to restock!), and settle in to this selection box of sweetly salty games below!
TRUFFLE SHUFFLE
Mmmmm les bon bons! Chocolate truffles are delicious with a capital D. And this game is choc full of them! A card game from AEG, this set collection offering has a sweet but satisfying scoring centre!
Super easy to learn, each player selects cards from the overlapping pyramid arrangement to add to their own collection of ever expanding eats. Points come through building poker style melds e.g. four of a kind or flush style sets. But be mindful that the cards you take could unlock some delectable delights for your opponents. With a selection box of face up and face down cards, as well as modifiers/action cards that allow you to manipulate your truffles, this one will feed the greedy gamer in each of you!
PATCHWORK VALENTINE
Will you be my valentine? Bring this to the table on 14 February (or any other night) and the answer will be a resounding yes! The polyomino powerhouse that is Uwe’s quilt creating Patchwork has had a flinger licking re-skin. Gone are buttons and fat quarters, replaced instead by scrummy chocolates and a sweet cherub! The rules are the same – buy pieces to fill your board, balancing the cost in time against the benefit of the gold foil wrapped chocolates. With turn order dependent on how much you have spent in time, you might get two, three or even four dips into the box before your opponent gets a sprinkling of cocoa powder! And don’t forget those bonus single square chocolates up for grabs as you make your way around the time track!
AZUL MASTER CHOCOLATIER EDITION
No ambassador here, but the Master Chocolatier edition is most definitely spoiling us! Again this is OG Azul with an appetizing re-skin where the gorgeously chonky pieces are now made to look like chocolates and other sweet treats. Gameplay remains mostly the same with drafting, placing, and then scoring in each of the rounds. And you still need to gather enough of each type of tile to make your rows look tempting. But within this scrummy selection box, there are now double sided factory tiles and some new flavours in the form of special powers! SO what are you waiting for? Dig in as this game looks good enough to eat!
CHOCOLATE FACTORY
Play with chocolate. No really! In the early 20th century, entrepreneurs want to make their money from the sweet stuff, and you are their chief chocolatier! A euro game with a sweet centre, you have 6 days to make your mark on the industry. Turning cacao into delicious chocolate and then refining them into boxes of different types is how you make your fame and fortune. But you don’t have forever – the rolling(!) conveyor belt works like a timer, and you need the correct factory parts in order to get what’s on a given section of the belt. Being able to upgrade your factory parts over the course of the game is therefore a major part of the sweet/salty strategy in this game! Machines don’t run themselves, however, so you also need employees. Their skills and experience in chocolate making and selling is unrivalled, and they help crowd specific department store clients for are majority bonuses at end game. A game of delicious decisions, Alleycat Games has given us a tasty treat!
MONOPOLY WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY
Now I know Monopoly is a Marmite game – you either love it or you hate it. But when it’s combined with the original 1970s Wonka and his chocolate wonderland, there’s got to be something everybody can lick…ahem, I mean like!
Gone are the famous streets of London, replaced instead by rooms from the famous factory. Not only that but you’ll see plenty of familiar faces as you make your way around the board. Some sweet and some ridiculously sour. You can gobble up songs too but don’t go near the Store Room or the Inventing Room as you’ll be penalised, and I don’t mean finding raisins in your choccy bar (who ever thought that was a good idea?!). Buying, selling and trading are the aims of the game. And you’ll get to play with some Wonka inspired player tokens too!
We hope this has sated your appetite for some chocolate themed games! Enjoy every tasty turn on National Chocolate Day!