Entry 84- Week 39: Sugar Blast

        Our favorite game pub had a major sale recently to get rid of excess inventory of new and used games they had on hand. My mother, who is an amateur gamer, wanted to come with us to the sale and believe it or not everyone, including our 3 year-old daughter, was able to find a game. 

        I will not spoil whose game this one is, but I can promise you that everyone had fun with it. 

SUGAR BLAST (2020) 

BGG Description 

Making sweet combinations can be such a blast! In Sugar Blast, you try to make connections between same-colored candies to create blasts! You must swap out two adjacent candies to make a string of three or more of the same type. Then, you remove the matched candies and adjust the unique tilting board so that candies slide down to fill in the missing spaces. Finally, you fill in candies at the top from ones chosen randomly from the bag. The bigger the blast you create, the more candies you earn. 

You are going to try to make big moves, but must be careful not to leave valuable opportunities for your opponents. Everyone is in a race to collect candies and complete the objective card. The first one to collect the necessary candies will earn a sweet victory! 

—description from the publisher 

Weight 1.0/5 

A Little More Info 

        Have you ever played a match-3 game on your phone such as Candy Crush? IF you have, then this game will come to you with ease. As stated in the BGG Description, you take two candies next to each other to swap out and make a 3-candy match (or higher) called a blast. 

        You then keep one of the candies in the match (and an additional candy with higher numbered candy matches), tilt the board in your direction, and refill the board. If new blasts are created (without swapping candy), you repeat the last few steps until there are no more matches. 

        Seems easy? Well, yes and no. In order to win the game you need to accomplish the goal card that was selected during the set-up of the game. There are six different goal cards to choose from. However, during your turn you want to try to make it harder for your opponents to gain the candies they need to win. 

        The box does state that the game is for ages 8+ but with some help our daughter can play the game. The other day, she even grabbed the game and set it up for all of us to play. 

What we like about the game 

        We love that the mechanics of the game is super simple to understand (pattern recognition and set collection) that even younger children can do with ease. 

        We love that the board tilts on all four sides making the sliding of the candies easy. This is one part of the game our daughter loves to do (besides drawing the candy pieces from the bag). 

        We do love that it is a family game in which young and old can play together. Even though the box says 8+ younger children can play the game. 

        The next thing we love is that to win the game you need to accomplish a goal, not just having the most candy pieces at the end. In the few games we have played, we notice that not all goals are equal and with one of them, it took us longer than the 20 minutes of game time the box states. 

        Now we will address the candy pieces themselves. The plastic candy pieces are durable and won’t easily break. The stickers on them are also fitting and comic like. The brown is a toasted marshmallow, the orange is a candy corn, the green is a green colored ribbon candy, the red is a red and white candy cane, the yellow is a wrapped lemon drop, and the purple is a wrapped hard candy. They just make you want to smile when you look at them. 

What we don’t like about the game 

        The only thing that, for us, would have made the game better is more goal cards that includes different difficulty levels (such as one star up to three or five stars). This would make it more kid friendly and more inclusive for all ages instead of just 8+. 

FINAL THOUGHTS 

        I know our biggest “gripe” with the game is the 8+ age recommendation but I think that is because of the drawstring bag that comes with the game (you know the United States wants to protect our children as best as they can). 

        Overall the game play is fun and simple and we love that all ages can really play it. Our daughter loved playing the game with her Oma. 

        So can you figure out whose game this is? Our daughter has claimed it as her own, but all four of us have enjoyed it so far. 

FAMILY GAMER VERDICT 

    We give this game a solid 8 out 10. 

    

    We would recommend this being added to your collection especially if you have younger children around and you just want to play a simple game that doesn’t take long to play. 

    In this case it would be eight thumbs up for the four of us that played.