Lord of the Fries De-Lux Edition

Lord of the Fries (LOTF) De-Lux is a reissue of the low budget/no budget Cheapass Game of the same title. The differences between the regular and De-Lux versions of the game are both subtle and obvious.

What you get for your fifteen simoleons:

The most obvious change to the game is the reprint with attractive color cards, a box (okay, it's a Chinese food take-out box, but that's fitting, considering the games' subject matter), and even a small pink dice. The box is amusing, but more of a gimmick than anything else. Mine fell apart promptly. Brian Snoddy's garish zombie artwork is demonstrated to great effect in this version of the card game. I can think of no better illustrator to depict the obvious connection between rotting corpses and fast food.

The subtle change is two more ingredient cards (veggies and sauce), which probably makes for a slightly longer game. I'm guessing here, as I never bought the first version. There are also more menu cards and even blank ones for creating your own menus.

Cheapass refers to LOTF as being a "thematic sequel to Give Me The Brain. It takes place at the same restaurant, has the same cast of characters, and requires roughly the same equipment. But the game is entirely different." (Cheapass Web site) I don't own Give Me the Brain, but I have seen that one played, and consider the differences between that game and LOTF to be not as obvious as Cheapass claims.

Mechanics:

Players choose orders from the menu cards (only one card per game), and try to fill them with FOOD CARDS from their hands. Menu orders are fairly iconic and easy to assemble. For example, the Soylent Night menu item requires 1 bun card, 1 fries card, and 1 cheese card, plus Fries and a Drink. Players win POINTS from successfully completing menus. A game is pretty fast moving, and should take less than a half an hour to run through.

The Play Sequence:

Shuffle!

Dealer Deals out the Entire Deck, players create HANDS of cards randomly.

Deal ROLLS an order from the menu.

Play goes around the table,with each player trying to fill the order from their hands.

If you make the play, you become the LEAD. Now you may CALL the next deal or roll for it.

Pass or Play

As you complete a menu, you save your cards for scoring.

Move the deck around the table. Each player gets a chance to deal. When the last player deals, the game is over.

First player to run out of cards ends the game. The points are tallied, and the player with the highest points WINS! (er... becomes "Lord of the Fries")

I played this one through about four times with my wife and mother-in-law (please, make no references to the connection with the undead). I wish I had had more players handy, but such is life. My regular gaming guys do not like abstract games; it was a major Sisyphean task to get them interested in playing FIGHT CITY by the same publisher, though they did end up liking it. LOTF lacks something with only 3 players, but probably would be too quick with 6 or 7. Play is fast even with three, and quickly becomes repetitive. I was reminded (strongly) of Go Fish and Bridge combined. This is probably intentional; I suspect James Ernest goes to that well quite a bit with his game designs.

The Verdict

The addition of color adds a lot to LOTF; heck, it would add a lot to almost ANY Cheapass game (except, maybe, Renfield, which has beautiful gothic comic art that should never be colorized... but they said the same thing about Dracula, didn't they?). The rather low price increase makes the decision to buy a De-Lux set very palatable indeed; as usual Cheapass lives up to the company name by making games at almost disposable prices. De-lux goes for about $15, the Regular LOTF cost $6. LOTF De Lux is worth the money, but it isn't worth the money if you already own the regular version. "Nine bucks more, but nine bucks better?"

The only grievance I have is the highly repetitive nature of the game, which is something of a hallmark of Cheapass card games. They can colorize the cards, they can add new food cards and menus, but they can't make the game so drastically different to make game number 10 vastly different from game number 1. I suspect you will tire of Lord of the Fries quickly. Therefore, the higher priced color product would be a borderline purchase for me.

Pros: Fun, pretty to look at and wittily packaged.

Cons: Like many Cheapass Games, repetitive (and not so cheap as to be disposable, this time!)