Le Chocolat

• Designer: Mashiu
• Publisher: Allplay
• Players: 2
• Age: 7+
• Time: 10 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4fBewv6
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

In Le Chocolat, you’ll split the chocolate bar and claim the flavors that taste best!  Mix up the 36 chocolate tiles and arrange them into a grid. On your turn, split the chocolate into two chunks along a straight line. If there is ever a chunk of three or fewer tiles left at the end of a player’s turn, they’ll claim that chunk. Continue playing until all chocolate has been claimed. Then, score based on the rules of the scoring card (that changes every play). Did you get the best pieces, while avoiding negative ingredients? Most points wins!

Take the chocolate tiles, remove one at random unseen to the box, and then flip and mix the rest, eventually putting them into a 7×5 grid.  Choose one of the scoring cards to use in the game. The player who most recently ate chocolate goes first.

On a turn, the active player must split the chocolate into chunks by making a single “cut” – separating a previous block entirely along a row or column.  If there is at least one chunk of 3 or fewer tiles left, the player must collect at least one of those small chunks.  You can only collect one chunk, and you must take one if it is available.  Keeping the orientation of those tiles the same, move them in front of you into your scoring area.  You are welcome to look at the underside of any blank tiles so that you know what you have collected, but that information should likely be kept secret from your opponent.

Continue alternating turns where you split the chocolate and then possibly collect a chunk.  When all the tiles have been collected, the game is scored.  Flip all the tiles over and arrange the tiles by type.  Note that there are a few tiles which are blank on both sides.  Score the tiles based on the scoring card chosen at the start of the game.  The player with the most points wins.  Ties broken in favor of the player who collected the most tiles.

My thoughts on the game

Le Chocolat is a tiny abstract game where you try to split the chocolate in a way to allow you to collect the tiles that you desire.  There is definitely an art to choosing the right place and time to split up a chunk.  Each game will be different based on the scoring card that is chosen for the game.  I will note that the rules don’t actually tell you when to choose a scoring card.  We assumed that it was something to be done in setup.  

As the rules didn’t tell us, we also invented our own system which has also proven to be fun.  We deal out 3 scoring cards at the start of each game, and at some point in the game, each player must spend a turn discarding one of the scoring cards.  The one that is leftover is the one which is used to score the game.  I’m generally not one for homebrew rules, but in this case, we were left to invent our own way to use the ten scorecards!

Regardless of how you play, this is a quick but tactical game of splitting the chocolate.  There is a bit of risk-taking involved as well as most of the “blank” pieces have icons on the side you can’t see, and you just have to play the odds when you choose those pieces.

The game plays lightning fast, and it’s so quick that our sessions tend to be best 2-out-of-3.  But, you can play however you like.  It’s in the traditional micro Allplay box that you can pretty much carry in your pocket, so you can enjoy this one wherever you want.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale Y
• Neutral. 
• Not for me…

Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4fBewv6