Designed by Maxime Demeyere, with art by Jessy Topfer and 'eggbuttertoast', Waffle Time is a tasty breakfast-menu game from AEG where, over eight rounds, the 1-4 players are layering whipped cream, fruit, syrup and butter on their individual waffle so that the patterns of their particular layouts score points.
Whenever your layout of fruit meets a requirement of one of that fruit's objective card, you'll get to place out syrup tokens. It's actually these that score: 1 point when on a fruit and 3 points when the fruit is already on top of whipped cream. You will additionally score a butter, and more points, when your pattern of syrup matches an objective card.
Each round players will be taking their choice of two adjacent items (mostly fruit, but possibly cream or syrup) from the grid. There's an obvious first-pick advantage but the player(s) with later turn order get one or more compensatory syrup tokens so you'll at least sometimes want to engineer a later turn order so that you have the syrup you needed for a subsequent fruit placement. Waffles with fruit, cream, butter and syrup may not be the most balanced of breakfasts but balance between best pick and extra syrup is what you'll need to ensure to do well in this game.
Your fruit drafting and placement isn't what directly scores you points. Players coming fresh to Waffle Time might not immediately realise that it's only the syrup that actually scores them points. Once players appreciate that, however, this is an easy game to pick up and play; indeed, it's very playable as a family game and as a gateway game for players coming new to modern board games. And part of this game's appeal is its beautiful production quality: it's sure to leave you slavering for waffles!