Author Topic: Lord Of The Fries  (Read 1403 times)

Dragon

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Lord Of The Fries
« on: March 21, 2022, 18:34:18 »
Lord Of The Fries is a game designed and published by James Ernest & Cheapass Games. It is a quirky card game about zombies (definitely cartoon style, similar to what you'd see in a Plants Vs. Zombies video game, not gory movie stuff) making fast food. Many years ago, I bought the De-Lux Edition of the game, which included full color cards - something that was quite special considering that most of the games from this designer and company were printed with black ink on single-colored card stock paper. The company had recently printed a game called Brawl, which was a full-color card game and they had some extra room for on the color printers after meeting the needs for Brawl, which is how this De-Lux Edition of Lord Of The Fries came about. The game box was a pint-sized Chinese-food-box which made it even funnier as a collectors item just for the box alone.

Regarding the game play, the cards are dealt out, each player starting with about a dozen cards, depending on the selected menu. The Deluxe Edition had 7 different menus, each with their own special rules, which would sometimes remove several cards from the deck before the game starts, plus a blank one for creating your own. On a players turn, they try to "fill an order" by playing all the requested cards, or "pass" which sometimes means giving a card to the next player. Once a player can fill an order, that player places a new order, either by picking out something specific from the menu, or randomly determining the item with a dice roll. The round ends when any player has no cards left in their hand and then points are tallied up based on orders that were filled and cards remaining in other players' hands. If an order is difficult to fill initially, some of the order might be dropped or substituted, depending on the special rules for the menu.

Although the De-Lux Edition in the Chinese-food-box is a pretty rare find, the company has since published multiple full color editions, and at this point it shouldn't be too difficult to find at your friendly local game shop.

...

We played this game back in February for our family game night, so we limited game play to just a bit over 30-minutes, which was only 2 rounds. Although the game rules state that each player should be the dealer once, even in the past I've usually only played 3 rounds for a single game, regardless of the number of players.

Round 1, Isaac was not thrilled about the game and considered it to be completely a matter of luck, with "just a whiff" of skill. I was the one filling most of the orders. I did really well in the round, picking up 39 points. Isaac had only gotten 4 points, Beth had 1 point, Janai had -1 and since Grace had always been rolling dice for random menu items, as the end of the round came up, she was hit with a ton of negative points from everyone passing cards to her, ending the first round with -31. (When rolling, all players pass to that player who rolled the order rather than passing a card to the left. Part of the strategy in the game is knowing when it's a good time to do that.)

Going into Round 2, after everyone had seen why it was not a good idea to always roll for an order, everyone made better decisions and everyone scored better in the second round. In the second round, I got 47 points, Beth got 15, Janai got 23, Isaac got 25, and Grace got 33.

Personally, I really like the art style of this game, the humor on the cards, the menu, and even the box, for this particular edition. I've played the game with friends and most casual players have enjoyed the game. 
"Hello IT. Have you tried turning it off and on again? ... OK, well, the button on the side. Is it glowing?... Yeah, you need to turn it on. Err, the button turns it on. Yeah, you do know how a button works, don't you? No, not on clothes." - Roy (The IT Crowd)