Yes! Broccoli! Review

Yes! Broccoli! Review

• Designer: Mark O’Connor
• Publisher: Gangway Games
• Players: 2-5
• Age: 6+ (My son who is 5 loves playing this game.)
• Time to play: 10-15 Minutes

Hey folks! I received a review copy of Yes! Broccoli! From Gangway Games. Yes! Broccoli is a game that teaches kids how to pick healthy foods over junk food. I’m lucky where my kids already love eating their fruits and veggies. This is a bidding card game where the players bid for food cards. At the end of the game, the player with the most points for their meal wins.

Components

47 Food Cards, 45 Bid cards (Numbered 1-9 for each player), and 16 Power Cards.

Set Up

 

• Each player takes a set of bid cards of the same color. 1-8 in regular game, 1-9 if you’re my son and insistent to play with all the cards.
• Shuffle the food cards. Set the deck in the middle of the table.
• If playing with power cards, shuffle the power cards and deal two to each player.

Game Play

The game is played over 8 turns or 9 if you use all the bid cards.

• Draw cards from the food deck equal to players and place them face up in the center of the table.
  • These are the cards you’re bidding on. The healthier the food, the higher the points.
  • The numbers can be positive or negative.

• Simultaneously, players in secretly pick one bid card to use for this round of food.
• When everyone is ready, players reveal their bids simultaneously.
• Player with the highest bid wins and chooses first pick of the food.
  • If there is a tie, the bid card with the most broccoli at the bottom of their bid card wins.

Play continues on to the next highest bid and so on until all players have collected a food card from the round.

At the end of the round, players place the food they collected face up in front of them and then discard the bid card used. In a game, you’ll use your bid card only once.

Start the next round, and play until all bid cards are gone.

If playing with the power cards, you can play these at any time. Once you use a power card, it’s discarded and you can’t play it again. These are cards that can alter the game rules such as making the lowest card the winning bid or adding or subtracting from a bid card.

Final Thoughts

Yes! Broccoli! is a small pack card game, it’s easy to teach and play. It teaches kids that healthier food is better for you, and it even adds a math aspect to the game while scoring your meal.

The cards are a nice thickness. There’s a lot in this small pack. 108 cards and the rules to be exact. One of the down sides of this flip top pack is that it can easily rip towards the fold. I found that keeping the rules out of the box after opening it helped. I can get the cards and rules in easily, it’s more when my son wants to play it and opens the pack. The artwork blew me away for such a small pack game! I was not expecting such eye broccoli for the art. See what I did there, broccoli beats candy, so it’s a compliment. The bid cards all feature the same art, and that’s okay. They don’t need to all look different. The power cards were a little too plain compared to the food cards. I’m not sure how they could add the text and art to the card. That might make it too compact. My son’s favorite food card is the broccoli because it’s on the front cover and it’s playing tennis. I think my favorite is the ninja blueberry.

Game play is really fast and the kids caught on after a couple of turns. There’s some strategy to this game too. My son has caught on to not keeping the numbers in ascending or descending order. Not sure if this is to throw us off or because he’s stubborn. Then each turn you’re trying to read the other players, decided how badly you want to win, and if it’s worth throwing out a low number. There are times in the game where all the numbers are a couple values off, so it’s safer to use a low number bid. My son crushes this game. I’ll be doing something in another room, he’ll come running up to tell me he has set up the game and is ready to play. It’s currently his favorite. I like the scoring part, and working math into it with the kids.  We try and pair cards to get to 10 and then add the pairs together. We also work on canceling out numbers when you have a positive and negative of the same number.

Yes! Broccoli! Has been a hit with my family. It’s easy enough for my 5 year old to understand and play which is big. I love being able to spend time with family and play games. This one has the benefit of teaching healthy eating habits and math. After receiving this game to preview, I think I’ve played it more that 20 times now with him. I recommend this game to any family that has younger kids. It’s a great way to teach the importance of healthy foods and math when counting.

From my son, “You should buy it to have fun, and you can play it with more than 4 people.” He always has to play as yellow. He swears it’s the best one.

Here’s a link to the website to purchase the game.