Review of Charcuterie Crawl
It’s time for an epicly delicious dungeon dive! This fun hexcrawl journaling game is great for fans of Dungeon Meshi, cooking shows, or just fun adventures alike!
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Audience for Charcuterie Crawl
Charcuterie Crawl is accessible to a wide range of folks (so… kids AND grown ups) with a 1d6 dice mechanic (no/low math barriers) and a quick to pick up booklet (and very cute foldable zine) to guide the game. The theme was easy to connect to, and there was no combat, but it was still very exciting as the challenges in the dungeon increase the further you dive in. My kid (6yo) and I both really enjoyed it!
Setting in Charcuterie Crawl
Charcuterie Crawl is set in a dungeon full of ingredients… and encounters! You’re adventuring in to collect supplies to make a perfect dish for the land’s ruler, so this dugeon is FULL of tons of interesting fare that may be mundane (like a potato) to weird (like dragon eels and giant centipedes).
In the game, the dungeon is represented by a small hex crawl map that looked really simple… but turned out to be very challenging to navigate! The difficulty ramps up pretty quickly with each level, and with your goal being to collect as many catagories of ingredients as possible, it’s important to get as far in as you can! Each level of the dungeon is characterized by a different type of ingredient, like herbs and mushrooms at lower levels and bugs and eggs at higher levels.
Your character in Charcuterie Crawl
Your character in Charcuterie Crawl is a chef! They are tasked with creating something new and interesting for the ruler and seek out fantastic ingredients in the dungeon, despite not really knowing how to fight! They need to dodge, hide, and decide when it’s time to leave during their time harvesting materials for the feast.
Mechanics in Charcuterie Crawl
Charcuterie Crawl operates along a variety of 1d6 rolls, increasing difficulty, and inventory management on the part of the player.
On each hex, you’ll roll 1d6 to see if you find ingredients and then what you may find. You’ll also roll 1d6 to see if you encounter a creature and then how you handle it (hide, escape, take damage)!
Roll outcomes for both the ingredients search and running into encounters are dependant on the section of the dungeon that you’re exploring, and the two types of rolls oppose, meaning that as the dungeon level increases, it is harder to find ingredients AND you run into more creatures. By floor 6, the only way to find an egg is to get a perfect roll… and you will also still trigger an encounter (which makes a ton of sense if you’re out there stealing eggs)!
But there is a way to help yourself out!
You have an option to sacrifice spare ingredients to adjust your roll, the encounter outcomes get easier if you’ve already visited a tile, and you are always deciding on where and how far to go into the dungeon, so there is a solid player-driven strategy to the game when it comes to banking your inventory on lower levels and finding a good spot to investigate and pop back into a high level tile from another zone.
You’re limited to 3 health, so it does take a bit of to succeed… my first run, I only go to level 4! My second time, I got to level 6, after I adjusted my strategy, and it was fun getting to figure that out.
After you’ve gathered what you think will be enough for your dish, you’ll then try to figure out how it all fits together into a dish… and roll (based on how much you collected) to see if the ruler is pleased… or disgusted!
Overall thoughts on Charcuterie Crawl
We’re fans of Dungeon Meshi and Rutabaga Adventure Chef and IRL cooking shows in general, so this was kind of an easy win for us on the theme. For gameplay, this was a combination of a dungeon crawl and a solo-journaling game, and it just worked out really well. Mechanics were simple/easy to pick up but still “thinky” and interesting. Games weren’t super long (~15 minutes), which was good for what we needed today as we were taking some small breaks between other family activities. We loved the vibes and really enjoyed playing.
Find a copy of Charcuterie Crawl
You can find a copy of Charcuterie Crawl here on the Big Puffin Games itchio page!
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