YORKTON - In the world of small footprint card games Scott Almes is becoming one of the best known and popular designers, and with good reason.
A big part of that popularity comes from Almes’ contributions to Button Shy’s Simply Solo series including the upcoming Hyperstar Run, The Last Lighthouse, Unsurmountable and Food Chain Island.
A Nice Cuppa is the seventh game in Button Shy’s Simply Solo series.
In the game players are managing ‘worries’ through card management across eight turns. As worries are revealed, they complicate your life and force you to become distracted.
Instead the game wants you to focus on your tea to eliminate the problems.
After the eight turns you follow a scoring process to see how you did – and often that will mean spilled or weak tea is the result.
Now there is enough English in my family tree to enjoy a tea to relax, and to know as my grandfather would say cream in tea only ruins the tea. Drink it warm and not too sweet – with honey of course – to chill.
And that is basically what a Nice Cuppa is about. It’s an ultra easy set up card game which will play out well under half an hour – so you can sneak in a game when on a solo ‘tea’ break, that simply wants you to think about the game – meaning your mind isn’t on all the usual bumps of life. That in itself makes this one worth having on-hand.
The art by Andrea Ivetic Vicai feeds in to the over arching attempt to illicit so relaxation for the gamer.
To start the game, first shuffle the seven Tea cards and place them in a line, ‘focused’ side up, each with a random face-down ‘worry’ card directly below it.
On your turn, first flip over a single face-down worry. Then, in sequence from left to right, resolve each face-up worry card which forces rearrangement of the tea cards in various ways.
There are other rules, but don’t worry nothing is daunting in terms of understanding what you must do.
After eight turns, your tea is ready, and you score points for each tea card you have in the correct order, plus extra points for each tea card with its focused side showing. You lose points for remaining worry cards.
A little game that really is ideal as a way to just escape for a wee bit of gaming amid a hectic day.
And, as is often the case with games these days, and Button Shy releases in particular, there are already expansions although the base game is just a 2024 release.
The first is a Nice Cuppa: A Good Book, a five-card expansion which adds two new tea cards and three new worries to manage.
With the expansion you use a full set of nine tea cards (and correspondingly worries) to play through a longer, more challenging game – and yes a bigger time commitment although not arduously so, as you play through 10 rounds.
Then there is a Nice Cuppa: Seasonal Stresses, a four-card expansion introducing ‘stress’ cards. Add one random stress card above your Tea line at the start of the game. Should you complete the card’s requirement you may immediately use its bonus effect then remove it from play.
If you’re unable to eliminate your stress, you’ll suffer negative points at the end of the game.
The seasonal stresses can be added to the base game, or the base game and good book expansion combined, adding just a bit more flavour and challenge – frankly this one is almost always worth adding into the mix even if wanting a shorter game with just the core cards.
With the expansions there is quite a lot of replay, and since its Almes and Button Shy more may well be coming in the future to expand a Nice Cuppa farther.
A very solid solo experience to check out at www.buttonshy.com
