Choose Your Piece of Pie Slice by Slice in This Light Strategy Game

Take turns building your pie, piece by piece, keeping an eye out for scoring combinations and decorations.

Piece of Pie, from Blue Orange Games, is a family-friendly, fifteen-minute game with fast turns in which the scoring requirements change each game.

Gameplay

Depending on player count, three-to-four pies (each consisting of eight pieces) are assembled in the center of the table. A token is placed in the center which points to one piece in each pie. Each pie piece comes in one of four flavors, and some will also have a decoration on it (chocolate shavings, frosting, or cookie shapes).

Next the recipe and pattern cards are shuffled and one is dealt face up from each deck (the remaining cards are returned to the box). The recipe card tells you specific flavor patterns you need to match in order to earn extra points, such as a piece of kiwi in between two pieces of matching pie flavors, or a piece of apricot and a piece of strawberry opposite each other.  The pattern card tells you specific patterns you must create in your pie to earn points, such as three matching pieces adjacent to each other of any flavor or two matching pairs separated from each other by any two other pieces.

Finally, each player is dealt a perfect piece card which they look at but keep secret from the other players. This card tells you which of the four pie flavors will earn you extra points for having them in your pie.

On your turn you select a piece of pie from one of the pies in the center of the table and add it to your pie. You must either select one of the pieces that the token is pointing to, or a piece that is adjacent to a missing piece. When adding a piece to your pie, if it is your first piece you place it anywhere, otherwise you must place it adjacent to a piece already in your pie. Once you have decided on a place for a piece, you may not move it again.

The game ends once everyone has created an eight-piece pie (in a two-player game each player makes two pies). Players then add up their scores based on the flavor, pattern, and recipe cards. You also earn an extra point for each piece in your pie with chocolate shavings, three points for two or more adjacent pieces with frosting, and five points for sets of the three cookie shapes. The player whose pie is worth the most points wins the game.

Review

Piece of Pie is a simple, fast-playing game with a scoring mechanism that causes you to think and plan several moves ahead. Many of the scoring requirements listed on the cards ensure you don’t just think about the pieces you’re currently adding, but also consider the opposite side of your pie or what pieces may be available to select later on.

Many of the cards also combo off each other in interesting ways, and the different scoring elements come together to leave you with some intriguing choices. The one drawback we did find was that your perfect piece flavor and the recipe cards will sometimes overlap. If a recipe card calls for your flavor, you’ll find it harder to get that flavor since more players will be going after it. It does mean when you do get a piece in that flavor it can in theory score extra for you, but generally we found it to be a little imbalanced.

Despite this slight balance issue, the game plays so quickly and is so light, that this doesn’t feel like a huge drawback. It’s so easy to reset and go again. It’s the type of game that is addictive and you find yourself playing several rounds of.

The components are great and the game looks lovely. The pie pieces are made sturdy and should hold up nicely, while the artwork on them is bright and colorful and will certainly leave you hungry for pie (so be warned!).

Piece of Pie is family-friendly, and it’s certainly something you can play with your kids but also something adults can enjoy on their own. The downtime is minimal, the gameplay smooth, and it works well across all player counts.

Pros: Simplicity, interesting choices, speed, component quality

Cons: Imbalanced scoring card combinations

Disclosure: we received a complimentary review copy of this game.