Note: This preview uses pre-release components and rules. What you see here may be different from the final, published game. This post was a paid preview, you can find out more information here.
I’m not gonna lie, I have a soft spot for cute little forest creatures. I mean, who doesn’t!? The success of games like Everdell, Forest Shuffle, and even Root seems to suggest that other gamers share my love of forest fauna. But put an apron and chef’s hat on a raccoon and suddenly it’s ten times cuter! Enter Macaraccoon, a game of baking feats and frosted forest treats, from publisher Memesys Culture Labs.
Macaraccoon is a layering and contract fulfillment game for 2-5 ambitious bakers who will roll, whisk and frost their way to pastry fame.
Gameplay Overview:
Macaraccoon, the famous Bakemaster of Sugarmouth, is about to retire. Players take on the role of woodland pastry chefs who will compete in a baking contest to choose Macaraccoon’s successor.
Throughout the game players will layer transparent bakery cards to match the recipes on order cards and earn points. But they must be careful about the order in which their cards are placed, because it has to match the recipe precisely!
On a player’s turn, they will take one of three actions: Pick an ingredient from the 4×4 grid on the Kitchen Board, Serve an Order, or use a “Whisker” Power. They can possibly take additional actions by activating a “Sugar Rush”, spending sugar cubes to take an extra turn.
Picking an Ingredient: The kitchen board is populated with ingredient cards at the beginning of the game, but one space is left empty. On their turn, a player can take an ingredient directly adjacent to this empty space, or they may choose to skip over one ingredient by placing a sugar cube from their supply onto the skipped ingredient, taking a card next to that one instead. In either case, the player chooses one of the face-up ingredient cards in the pantry and places it into the empty space on the kitchen board. In this way, the empty space on the board moves around, opening up different areas for players to take ingredients from, and the ingredients themselves gradually get swapped out.
The chosen ingredient is placed on the player’s personal countertop board, which depicts three empty plates. The transparent ingredient card is placed on one of these plates. If there are other ingredients on the plate, they must be placed either on top or below all other cards in the stack. You cannot place it in the middle of a stack or reorder stacks once they’re created.
Using a Whisker Power: Whiskers are other chefs at the bakery who can be paid in either sugar cubes or ingredients to help you. During setup, Whisker cards are placed along the top edge of the kitchen board. These critters have special powers players can use, and in addition, allow them to take any ingredient from that card’s column. When a Whisker power is used, the row of cards slides to the left and the rightmost space is filled with a new card from the deck.
Serving an Order: There are two rows of three order cards, and these represent lines of customers waiting to be served. Each order card depicts two or more ingredients in a specific order- bases such as pancakes or waffles always go on the bottom, spreads go on top of the base, and toppings must always be on the very top of a dish. When filling an order, players ensure that their ingredient cards match the order card, discard them, then take the order card, as well as possible bonus candy hearts that are worth points at the end of the game.
Players can fill an order in front of either line freely, but if they want to fill an order one or two spaces back, they will need to pay sugar cubes by placing them on the order(s) they skip. Serving orders is how players earn points, and many will also reward you with additional sugar cubes. When an order is filled, a new card is drawn, so there are always six available orders until the order deck runs out, at which point the endgame is triggered.
Once the end of the game is triggered, players finish out the round, then every player gets one more turn. The player with the most points from order cards and candy hearts becomes the new Bakemaster of Macaraccoon’s bakery!
Gameplay Impressions:
Often when I see cute or colorful artwork in a game, I’m immediately suspicious. I think my concern—right or wrong—is that all the effort went into making it look good, not into making sure it’s actually a good game to play. Despite this, I was immediately charmed by the art style of Macaraccoon and went in really not knowing what to expect, but hoping the gameplay would be equally charming. I’m happy to report that is exactly what I found to be the case.
At first glance, this is a contract fulfillment game with some cool transparent cards. You stack these cards to make your desserts to fill orders. Pretty straightforward. Or, well, it is and it isn’t. Learning the game is simple—everything makes sense and feels intuitive, but when you actually play it, you discover a depth and a decision space that belies the charming accoutrements. While there’s a smidgen of luck in which ingredients and orders turn up when, this isn’t a game you’re likely to win or lose because of luck; rather, it rewards the player who plans carefully and utilizes the resources on offer to the best advantage. Every decision matters without feeling overwhelming. The fact that the game manages to straddle that line between strategy and accessibility so well is, in itself, an impressive design feat.
When you make one choice in Macaraccoon, you’re actually making several choices. For example, when you take an ingredient from the kitchen board, you also fill in the previously empty space. You get to choose the ingredient to fill it with from those available in the pantry. I would often want to choose an ingredient that I needed, but when I saw it was something an opponent could also use, I’d hesitate because I’m opening it up for them to take. So do I place something nobody wants, hoping they’ll place the ingredient I want later, or do I take a chance that nobody will pick up what I want and I can get it on my next turn
We find a similar instance of indirect interaction with the sugar cube mechanism. After you leave a sugar cube on a card, the person who takes that card in the future also gets the cube, so you have to decide if it’s worth potentially sweetening the deal for your opponents. Or maybe if you’re lucky, or just plan well, you’ll get your own sugar cube back! That’s where the game’s exciting Sugar Rush mechanism comes in handy, which allows players to spend sugar from their jar to take an extra turn. But executing the perfect turn, or sequence of turns, takes careful planning. The order in which you do things also matters, with particular regard to the ingredient cards, since you need to ensure you layer them in the correct order to fill recipes, and you only have three plates! On the other hand, if you make a mistake or end up with ingredients you don’t want, you can spend them to activate a power on one of the Whisker cards.
Final Thoughts:
The game I kept comparing this to in my mind was Flamecraft, probably because that game is also cute and also has animals who bake things. And while Flamecraft is decent, I feel it’s both slightly overwrought and slightly too simple at the same time. Macaraccoon veers away from those potential pitfalls of broad-appeal games, presenting a well-balanced, ideally paced experience.
Like the best desserts, Macaraccoon combines beautiful presentation with delightfully unexpected flavor. It hits the sweet spot between strategic decision space and ease of gameplay. Among contract fulfillment games, this one definitely stands out. Its various ingredients combined make it ideal for both fledgling and experienced gamers, whether they enjoy abstract strategy or a more thematic experience.
Macaraccoon launches today on Kickstarter. Head over to their campaign page if you are interested in getting a copy, or finding out more info.
