Tasty Battles 2015

The village of Piquant was a very happy place. They had five bountiful farmlands that each produced a different type of food. All of the people had lots of delicious food to eat. But the evil wizard Captious grew jealous and cursed each of the five farmlands. The food grew to a monstrous size and began to attack the village. The people had only a limited supply of cannonballs to defend themselves against the humongous food! Thankfully a giant from the land of Epicure volunteered to guard the village and eat any food that got too close to the village - even though it was food that giants didn't normally eat. The wizard's magic is limited so your challenge is to defend your village until it runs out.

This is a co-op game designed to be played together by a parent and one child. The game contains a single-sheet board, tokens, and a small deck of cards. Players will also need to provide one 6-sided die and about 10 small candies or snacks that the child likes to eat such as M&Ms, Fruit Snacks, or Fish Crackers. The parent should also choose five foods that they would like the child to try eating. I recommend choosing one food from each of the five food groups but any combination of foods will work.

Each section of the board contains a track leading towards the village and is marked by an icon of one of the five food groups. Before the game, assign one of the five foods to each track (markers are provided to help you remember which food is on which track). Each turn, players will draw a card from the deck that will indicate what tracks are attacking the village that turn. Move that marker one space down the track.

The village can defend itself by rolling a die and trying to get a higher number than the advancing token. At any time, the player may use one of their "cannonballs" (candies) to automatically win a battle. If they use a cannonball it is lost forever (the parent gets to eat it).

The giant marker can move along the red line between the "1" spaces. If a giant and a food monster are ever in the same space, the giant may immediately remove that piece by eating it. The child must taste the associated food for this action. The child can push back the food monsters by tasting the associated food.

If any food monster is ever able to enter the village it squishes all the villagers, the game is lost, and the cannonballs are lost (the parent gets to eat them). If the child is able to defend the village until the draw deck is empty, he or she gets to eat all the remaining candy cannonballs as a reward.

This game is inspired by Israeli Independence by Darin A. Leviloff.

This game won 3rd place for Best Co-operative game in the 2015 Children's Game Print and Play Design Contest.