Gimbap

• Designer: Roberto Fraga, Yohan Goh
• Publisher: Korea Boardgames
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 8+
• Time: 15 minutes
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• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Can you play a game and make food at the same time? You must if you are playing Gimbap.

To set up, each player takes one of each of the components: gim (dried seaweed); a sheet each of bap (rice), cheese, and perilla leaves; and a (wooden) strip of ham, spinach, and danmuji (yellow pickled radish).

Each round, turn up point tokens equal to the number of players minus one. A player rolls 2-4 customer dice. The more dice that are rolled, the higher the difficulty.  Each die has multiple faces that show how the customer wants their ingredients in the gimbap: for instance, the cheese must (or must not) touch the gim, the ham must not touch the spinach and danmuji, the rice must touch the danmuji, etc. 

Everyone races to make their gimbap at the same time, which must be finished by rolling the gim and using the velcro to hold your gimbap together. Grab the highest point token still available.  As you are constructing the gimbap, you must use all your fillings and the Gim must be on the outer layer.

Once everyone has finished, players check their gimbap to see whether they met the customer’s requests, starting with whoever has the highest token. If a player succeeds, they turn the token face down and keep it; otherwise, they pass it to whoever finished first after them. (If a player has two tokens, they keep the higher-valued token and pass the lower — or they pass the higher one and discard the other.)  

At the end of the round, any unclaimed scoring tokens are discarded from the game.  Continue playing rounds until all the tokens have been claimed, and at that time, whoever has the most points wins.

My thoughts on the game

Gimbap is a super cute speed puzzle game where you have to try to create a dish that meets the requirements as fast as possible.  You can roll up to four dice, and each die rolled adds a new criteria to the puzzle.

The bits are well done, and you have to manipulate them on every turn.  It takes a bit of practice as the wooden pieces can sometimes slip out of the felt-like cloth strips – but that’s part of the challenge.  Also, since you’re trying to work as fast as possible, you have to be extra sure that you have things in the right place. Definitely take time to check the final products, it’s surprising just how often your cheese somehow manages to touch the spinach once everything is rolled up!

As with all speed games, you’ll probably know who is going to win the game after the second round or so – as the person who is best able to solve this type of puzzle will win a disproportionate percentage of the rounds.  So, unless you have players who have the same level of competency, the final result will likely be lopsided.  That being said, it’s still just plain fun to try to get your ingredients in the right place, and I’m happy to try my best each time Gimbap hits the table.

Until your next appointment,

The Gaming Doctor

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