Ramen Fury! Review

Ramen Fury! Review

Ramen Fury is cute little card game that has you battling it out to create the tastiest ramen, combining flavour sachets and ingredients to score the most points, while also trying to halt your opponents scoring by lacing their Ramen with flaming hot chillies! Let’s see what I thought of this food-based card game.

For those based in the UK, you will likely know how supermarkets are starting to cotton on to the board game trend. Tesco and Asda are just a couple of examples of the major retailers who are starting to stock the less generic titles such as Monopoly and Cluedo, opting instead to offer the likes of Codenames and Exploding Kittens. Don’t get me wrong, it is nothing like you FLGS, but it’s certainly a step in the right direction in my opinion. Just recently however, I managed to find Ramen Fury in Asda, at a very reasonable price of just £1!!! Of course, it went straight into my basket, ready for an afternoon of gaming that day!

How to play Ramen Fury!

Ramen Fury is designed for 2-5 players and plays in around 10-20 minutes, making for a great filler game or travel card game. To set-up, each player will receive 3 bowls of plain ramen, as well as 2 spoons and 3 random ingredient cards. You then need to shuffle the remaining ingredient cards, drawing 4 face up and placing these next to the draw pile. This is the pantry.

On a players turn, you take 2 actions from a choice of 6. You can play an ingredient card from your hand, ensuring each bowl only has 1 flavour sachet (these allow you to score) and no more than 5 ingredients in total. You can draw a card from either the blind draw pile, or the pantry. You can eat your bowl of ramen to lock down the points you will have scored from it. You can clear the pantry, discarding the 4 current cards and drawing 4 new ones. You can also empty your bowl of ingredients to start again or use one of your spoons to take the top-most ingredient out of your bowl.

Each ingredient will be either a protein-based or plant-based ingredient, apart from the Nori and the chillies. The Nori adds one point to each bowl it is placed in, whereas the chilli takes away a point. The only way to negate this is to take it out by using a spoon, or adding the Fury flavour sachet which converts chillies to 2 points!

Ramen Fury ends once someone has scored all three of their bowls, then each player has one more turn. The winner is the one with the most points scored from the three bowls.

My “Honest” opinion

Right of the bat, you know this game is about Ramen! The box of cards comes in a ramen packet which you tear open. Upon opening, you are greeted by a “ramen block”; the box with the cards and instruction booklet in. The theme is spot on here and I really dig it!

The game is fairly quick and easy to learn, with a simple rulebook and easy to follow instructions. I was up and playing within about 10 minutes so no problems there!

As for the game itself, the gameplay is enjoyable, spritely and just right for the weight of game here. The turns are swift, keeping the game flowing nicely and I had great fun playing! The take-that element allows you to impact other players in quite a big way, especially when they have a flavour sachet in their bowl which relies on pairs of ingredients. If you get a chilli into their bowl, they are going to have a hard time trying to get that second pair scoring. Of course, they also won’t have a chance to change that with the Fury flavour pack into a positive score since they already have a flavour sachet in there.

While to begin with you may feel that you have loads of time to score the high points, the game lulls you into a false sense of security as you will find you bowls filling up fast, or my case, my opponents bowls. Once all three bowls are full, every other player gets one last turn but if you have been holding out for a specific ingredient, you’re going to find yourself out of luck!

Final thoughts

For such a small game, there is a lot to it and I really like the fast-paced nature of it. I would highly recommend this as a travel game, especially for families to take with them on a long car journey or any other sort of lengthy travel. You will find yourself whipping this out again and again thanks to its simplistic nature but high-level of gameplay. I thoroughly enjoyed it and the fact I picked it up at a bargain price of £1 just sweetens the deal; certainly no chillies in my Ramen bowl!!

The Honest Meeple Score!

A light card game with a good theme throughout and fast-paced enjoyable gameplay! A must-have for any family’s game collection!

G.A.M.E Review

I wanted to give people a quick run-down of what I think of the game and some quick facts and an idea of what to expect. Inspired by The Friendly Boardgamer’s D.I.C.E reviews over at https://thefriendlyboardgamer.wordpress.com, I thought I would have a shot at making my own acronym! In this case, I have taken GAME and will look at the Gameplay, the Artwork, the Mechanics and finally the Execution, to give you a quick idea of whether this game is right for you!

So, without further ado, check out my first G.A.M.E review below:

Gameplay – a short and sweet card game with little down time and a “flavoursome” theme. Simple enough for the whole family to play. A great travel game because of its size and duration. Highly enjoyable and can get really competitive throughout. Lots of replayability with this as well!

Artwork – the artwork is quirky and works well with the theme. Eye-popping visuals and good use of colour make this a sure fire hit with those that like a bright-looking game

Mechanics – a fairly simple set-collection, card playing game with a take-that element in the form of the chillies. No complicated set up or mechanic in this so very family friendly

Execution – Ramen Fury is a well-designed, family-friendly card game that plays quickly. The packaging is ingenious and compliments the theme. Short, sweet and simple; all ingredients for an excellent family card game!

These will be separated out in the future, but I would love to hear your feedback on this! Let me know what you think by dropping a comment below!

If you would like a copy of Ramen Fury! then you can pick one up over at Zatu Games by following this link: https://bit.ly/39PeJ9q

The above link is an affiliate link, so if you go ahead and buy the product, I will earn a commission from that sale. See it as a little thank you for recommending a game! I run The Honest Meeple in my free time so any support is greatly appreciated and this is a fantastic way of helping me out so thank you!

Tom Gorner

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