Donut Shop

Now you can make (or at least box up) the donuts, in Donut Shop from 25th Century Games! Jeffrey D. Allers designed this tile-laying game for 2-4 people to play in under 45 minutes.

Gameplay

To begin a game of Donut Shop, every player gets a Donut tile, a 20¢ box, and an Order card. A large cross-shaped starting tile goes in the center of the table, and the rest of the Donut tiles and Order cards go into their cardboard dispensers.

Your goal in Donut Shop is to make the most money by making large connecting groups of similar donuts and by boxing up donuts to fill orders.

On your turn, you place your Donut tile somewhere adjacent to other Donut tiles on the table. The rules here are what you’d expect: your placed tile must match up nicely – neither overlapping another tile nor sitting offset.

Once you’ve placed your Donut tile, choose one type of Donut on that tile to score: 5¢ for each donut in a connected group.

Then, you have the opportunity to pack some donuts in a box. Pick a box size, then discard Order cards from your hand to match every donut type you will cover. Finally, place the box tile over those donuts, and earn more money! You earn for the box size and get bonuses for some Order cards, like sprinkles cards or coffee cards.

To end your turn, draw a new Order card and a new Donut tile. But you must take ONE of them face-up and then take the other from the face-down options.

When the Order cards or the Donuts can no longer be refilled, the game is almost over! Play one last round without picking up new cards or tiles. Whoever has the most money, wins the game!

Impressions

If you ever saw the old commercials and said “it’s time to make the donuts!” then Donut Shop is for you. I have never played a tile-laying game that felt as thematic as this one. Nick Whittle’s art helps here, of course, but I really feel like I’m boxing up donuts and filling orders.

There’s a great tension in this game between making large groups of a single kind of donut versus boxing them up. Every time you box donuts, you not only get a boost to your money, you also cut off the possibility of making a group larger. But boxing a heterogeneous group of many kinds of donuts is expensive! You only draw one Order card each turn, so spending four or even five on a single box feels like too much.

You’ll reveal some information to the rest of the group too by which face-up tile or card you take. But you’re not allowed to take more than one face-up item, so be ready to change your plans to accommodate for whatever you took face-down!

Every time we played Donut Shop, the first few rounds felt like everyone helping each other, as we collectively made one or two large groups of donuts. But once everyone picked up a few Order cards, it became a race to fit the best boxes.

And that’s the final piece. Everyone has different Order cards, so what may appear like an easy choice for boxing might not even be an option for someone with different cards.

Family Fun

There’s very little reading in Donut Shop – mostly the numbers on the boxes and order cards. But there is a lot of multiplication and shape-oriented math involved. The box recommends a minimum age of 8 years; I think a slightly younger kid could play, but they will likely need help counting up how much money they earn each round. The relative size of the rewards are obvious if the math isn’t simple enough for those youngest ages.

We had a little bit of confusion about how the final round works – because we messed up the setup more than once. If you forget to either take out two cards and two tiles at the beginning of the game, or if you didn’t deal each player a starting card, the end doesn’t work – one player gets an extra turn. So make sure you follow all the setup rules! Oops!

Overall, Donut Shop was a pleasant surprise – simple to learn with interesting choices every round… and illustrations that make me hungry for more.

Find Donut Shop on Amazon, direct from 25th Century Games, or ask for it at your local game store.

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The Family Gamers received a copy of Donut Shop from 25th Century Games for this review.

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