A Nice Cuppa Review: A surprisingly good solo game

💎 BGG rated 7.4/10 w. just 373 ratings 💎

💡 Designer: Scott Almes

🎨 Artist: Andrea Ivetic Vicai

🖨️ Publisher: Button Shy

📅 Released: 2024

🧑🏻‍🤝‍🧑🏿 Players: 1

⚖️ Weight: 1.50/5

⏱️ Time: 15 minutes

🔗 View A Nice Cuppa on BGG

Also available as a Print and Play game

I have to be honest, I’m not a big solo gamer. Setting up a whole game for just me seems like a lot of effort. Plus, I really miss attempting to predict what another person might do next. You just don’t get that from an automa.

However, when I read about Scott Almes’s game - A Nice Cuppa - I was intrigued. It’s a wallet game, meaning it comes in a tiny folder about the same size as a credit card.

Setup is lightning fast, it plays in just 15 minutes and there’s no simulated opponent. Plus, as a Brit, tea is ingrained in our national psyche.

In A Nice Cuppa, you’re trying to make the perfect brew. That’s a 7 step process, represented by the seven tea cards. Your task is to try and get them in the right order.

Sounds simple? Well, you’ve also got life’s worries to consider. Your mind might drift to politics, your health, the state of your finances or, worse, existential dread.

These worries, in the form of cards beneath each tea card, negatively affect your ability to make and enjoy your cup of tea. They force you to move cards to places you might not want to.

The game takes place over 8 rounds. So what does a round look like?

First, you have to flip over a facedown worry card. Then you perform the actions on all face-up worry cards from left to right. So managing your worries so they don’t cascade and overwhelm you is central to the game.

Every tea card above an active worry card then gets flipped. The tea cards have two sides: focus and distracted. Any worry cards now below a focussed tea card are discarded. You can then always finish the round by swapping two adjacent tea cards.

Final scoring

After 8 rounds, you discard any tea cards to the left of number one. You keep any cards to the right that form an unbroken ascending sequence, discarding all others.

Then it’s simply:

☕+2 for each remaining focussed tea card

☕+1 for each remaining distracted tea card

☕-1 for each remaining worry card

There’s then a classic scoring table for you to judge how well you’ve done, with 5 points the bare minimum for success in the standard version of the game.

🎲 G - Gameplay

(pacing, downtime, intuitiveness)

What I really appreciate about this game is that you can play it in the time it takes you to drink a real cup of tea. That’s been judged to perfection.

As it’s a solo game, the downtime is entirely down to you.

My only critique is that the procedural nature of the gameplay took a bit of getting used to. It’s definitely not unintuitive, but the opposite isn’t true either. The supplied reference card definitely helps.

⭐ Score: 17/25

🎨 A - Art & Theme

(visual appeal, thematic coherence, component quality)

First off, the artwork is great. The style they’ve gone for fits perfectly with the nature of the game. It’s sweet and endearing.

I also think Almes has done a great job with the theme. Tying together the twin ideas of tea making and tackling worries is a great marriage.

The only possible thematic snag is that in the standard game you still score points even if you don’t actually end up making a cup of tea.

Thankfully, this is addressed in the harder “Ceremonial” version of the game where you lose outright if all seven tea cards aren’t in the correct order at the end.

⭐ Score: 20/25

⚙️ M - Mechanics

(design elegance, balance, novelty)

The design of the game is clever and well balanced. I’d say it’s not an easy game to do well at, which is a strength - one that takes a good deal of design skill to get right.

To me it feels novel, but then I am very much new to the world of solo gaming.

There is a certain level of luck involved in the initial deal of the worry cards. I’ve found that it makes some games easier to win than others. That’s a minor quibble, though.

⭐ Score: 17/25

😄 E - Enjoyability

(fun factor, replayability, emotional response)

I’m not sure I’d go as far to say the game is fun. It’s an enjoyable puzzle to solve while having a real cup of tea, but it’s not a game to make you smile. It’s more likely to frustrate you (in a good way!).

I also have concerns about long-term replayability. I’ve played five times now and it does start to get a bit samey.

That said, Button Shy has recently released a series of mini-expansions, which I’ll definitely be taking a closer look at.

⭐ Score: 16/25

A Nice Cuppa has been a great introduction to the world of wallet games. I love the fact that you can carry it around in your back pocket and its small footprint means you can play it almost anywhere.

I’m not sure I’m ever going to be a convert to playing heavy Euro games solo, but games like this make me want to explore more short solo games.

It’s a lovely puzzle to solve, perfect when you want to scratch the board game itch but you’re short on time.

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