Put on your chef hat and start chopping!

Put on your chef hat and start chopping, because we are making some sushi today! 😁 Maki Master 🍣 is a gateway game themed around sushi, pitting players against each other in a competition to complete more and better recipes. At its core it is a pattern matching game, as you have to match the symbol-sequences of recipes to complete them - but the mat you play on is shared between players so it also becomes more tactical as the position of things keeps changing. 😉 

Turns are quite simple: 

🍙 First, you always add one new ingredient to the shared board. This is the quintessential mechanic to complete recipes. ☝️ Also, the game lasts until the board is completely filled up. 

🍙 Second, you have a choice to either complete a dish if the board state matches a recipe card (e.g. there is a Nigiri, an Avocado and a Salmon in a continuous line); or you can choose to Prep, doing 1 of 3 small actions. The most important of these is getting Action cards that let you interact with the ingredients in other creative ways, like swapping the contents of two spaces or removing something. 🙃

You mostly want to do as many recipes as possible to earn the most points, but as you play you can also gather Wasabi 🌶️ cubes which also give you points. If you perfectly match a recipe, meaning that not just the ingredients themselves, but their order is matched exactly, you get bonus wasabi. 🧐 When drafting new cards then wasabi will be added to a shared wasabi board too, that players can take with one of the Prep actions. So this is another thing to pay attention to. 

Normally pattern recognition games aren’t our cup of tea, but I have to say that we really enjoy Maki Master. It’s just so clever and quick, and I think the usual stellar Kids Table BG graphic design helps to make it even more enjoyable. All the fonts and colors and illustrations are so great! 🤩 Even though I do not like sushi, seeing the illustrations makes we want to give them another chance. 😄 So whether you like sushi or not, if you are looking for a cool gateway game to play on your next gaming night, I’d definitely consider Maki Master! It’s really good. 🤩