Fromage

Road To Infamy Games has made some pretty solid games, their biggest hit being the Canvas series of games, which was how I was first introduced to them and I really like that game. Because they have some hits and okay games in their product log, I do pay attention to their upcoming games. When Fromage was announced I was definitely interested but I didn't immediately back it at the time, I was very much on the fence. It wasn't till I saw favorable reviews for it that I went and got a copy of it for myself to see how good it was.

Fromage looks like a lot, but it ends up playing very simple and easy. On your turn, you get to use your workers, which represent cheese makers that specialize in one of three types of cheeses. Each quarter of the lazy susan board will be pointed to a player to be able to do actions on. You can only make one cheese via a worker and do one gather resource action with another worker. Your player board might have space for a worker if you build a building that has it, however you're not always going to have all three workers to you every round.

That's because of the really nifty twist to this worker placement game: after everyone takes a turn, you rotate the board 90 degrees and you only retrieve the workers that are facing you. Now there's an expanded decision space due to this delayed worker retrieving mechanic: Do you place a worker for a higher value spot knowing you won't get them for up to 2 turns, or do you take a smaller value spot so you can use them again sooner?

Each of the four sections of the main board score in different ways, very much like different mini games. There's area majority, adjacency, pairs and instant bonuses. The center of the board, the resource gathering square, has two sides to it so it can actually be changed from game to game based on side and orientation. There's also added player asymmetry in drafting building tiles to replace the ones printed on the board, which are asymmetric already but the modularity in kind of crafting your beginning strategy is interesting to see and adds replayability.

Honestly, learning this for the first time it surprised me just how simple the game is, yet clearly has some depth in planning for future turns. Solo is also very straight forward to operate and without using separate components too. It was very quick to pick up and play.

Overall, I like how clean the gameplay here is: place workers, claim cheese spots, and do the best in all the different mini games. I would definitely bring this up for people who want fast and easy simultaneous play.

Played online with friends