What’s the new BGA game this past week, Coffee Rush. Sometimes you just need a nice shot of adrenaline as you brew up a lot of drinks at your cafe. Can you serve the most and most efficiently or are you going to get swamped and have customers leaving. Let’s take a look at Coffee Rush from Korea Board Games and see if it’s a drink that I enjoy.

How to Play Coffee Rush

Coffee Rush is a game of order fulfillment. The more orders you fulfill, the more points that you get. And points are the determining factor to the game. However, as more orders come in, you might find yourself flooded with them. So if you fail to complete an order, they are negative points for you at the end of the game.

The main board of the game is a grid made up of the ingredients that you need to complete an order. Some of them are special and give you some of the rarer ingredients. You place a worker on the board at the start of the game. On your turn you move that worker three spaces (some rules for more) and you collect the ingredients that you stop on with your three moves. Then you send those ingredients to cups, which you have three of, and fulfill orders if you can.

As you complete more orders you can trade in completed orders for special rules. It might allow you to double up on ingredients on some spots or move your worker in other ways around the board. But when you spend those orders you spend your points for the game.

Once you are done with your turn, all your orders shift down. And when you complete an order, your opponents add an order to the top of their display. So as players, you control how many orders are out there for your opponents to complete.

What Doesn’t Work

This is a fast and low scoring game. I think for some people it is going to feel like it’s over too fast. Or it is going to feel like you can’t fully explore the game. You want to try and unlock things for the benefit, but if you unlock too many things, you just spent all of your points in the game. I’ll talk about why that is something I like, but it means that the scores are very low in the game. And if you don’t track the end of the game, you might have no points at the end.

What Works

Upgrades

Let’s start out with that element that showed up in the negative. I think it is a positive as well. I like the question you need to ask yourself. Do I get an upgrade? The upgrade might let me consistently get two drinks done a turn, so I need two or three turns to make up for what I’ve spent. Is there enough time in the game? And that is a great tension for a game to have.

Tension and Interaction

Coffee Rush is a game with a good pressure to the gameplay. When you complete the turn and orders drop down further into your queue, you feel the pressure. Or if someone completes two orders and now you end up with a big backlog to do, there is good pressure in the game. I like that tension of trying to complete things and seeing if you can make the game more difficult for your opponents.

That interaction with your opponents for getting them more orders is great. Does it make sense, no, but it is very fun to do. Mainly because it’s a positive and a negative interaction. And there aren’t a ton more in the game. On that central ingredient board you move around can’t end your turn on a spot with an opponent, but that is about it for interaction. But the interaction of I give you an order which can be points positively or negatively is great.

Game Speed

Finally, I mentioned it, Coffee Rush is a fast game. I mean both for turns and for the complete game. It is one that is going to go by quickly and some might say too quickly. But I like games with snappy turns where you won’t get too bogged down in it. The turn still matters, the game isn’t playing itself, but it isn’t going to lock you up deciding what to do for a long time.

Who is Coffee Rush For

This is a fun game, I think, for people who want to play a bit more a game but nothing too complex. It works really well in terms of how simple it is to learn and play. But with that, I think that Coffee Rush is likely for a group where there are more casual gamers. That ease of understanding is going to work well there, but for a group of gamers who want something heavier and thinkier, I don’t think that Coffee Rush is going to offer enough.

Final Thoughts on Coffee Rush

I enjoy Coffee Rush. Is it a perfect game, no, but it is a fun one. My biggest complaint is that I’d love the game to last another two rounds or so. Just that little bit of extra time would let you feel like you completed more. And it would give you a chance to unlock more special moves. In a normal game I feel like I get one, but I’d love to have two of them, or maybe even three if I’m really risking it.

That bit of extra game length would likely also make it feel like the scores are a bit more important. If someone makes it to eight that is a great score. Or someone might miss out on some orders and get negative. But that is part of the fun of Coffee Rush too, it is a fast filler almost game where it is more than filler but not going to bog you down in a huge game.

My Grade: B-
Gamer Grade: C-
Casual Grade: B+
Strategy (out of 10): 5
Luck (out of 10): 2

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