Have a Sweet Tooth? Go Nuts for Donuts!

Who can say no to a delicious Boston Cream? Well you just might have to in Go Nuts for Donuts if another player wants it too.

Gamewright always makes beautiful games, with high quality components and lovely artwork. But is their more recent, delicious creation fun to play as well?

Gameplay

Each donut card is marked with how many players must be in the game in order to use it. You place any donuts that require more players than you have back in the box, and shuffle the rest to create the donut deck.

Next you create the donut row. You draw donut cards equal to the number of players, plus one, and lay them out in a row and put indicator tokens above each one. Each player is then given selection cards to correspond with each indicator token.

At the start of each round, every player chooses one indicator card to say which donut they want, and plays it face down. All cards are flipped at the same time. If two or more players went after the same donut, that donut is immediately placed in the discard pile. If you are the only one who claimed a particular donut, you place it face up in front of you.

Some donuts have special actions, such as taking the top card of the discard pile, which are activated as soon as you take the donut. Some donuts may just be worth a certain number of points, others may score in special circumstances such as if you have more of its type than other players have or if you have six different kinds of donuts.

Once each player’s indicator card has been resolved, you take back your cards and the donut row is refilled. The game continues until there are not enough donuts in the donut deck to refill the row. Players count up their points and the highest total wins.

Review

The very first thing you notice about Go Nuts for Donuts is the artwork. Each donut is beautifully illustrated with adorable little faces. They don't just look extremely yummy, they also look cute!

But there's more to the game than just aesthetics. There’s a wide range of donuts, and each type works in a unique and interesting way. This can lead to some fun choices as you try to determine which donut you want but also which donut an opponent is likely to go for. Trying to read your opponents and avoid claiming the same donut (or purposefully trying to block them) is a lot of fun, but so is adapting your strategy based off the donuts other players start collecting.

Set up is made quite easy as there's not just a number on each donut card to list the player count it's used for, but the cards are also color coded. Only have four players? You put all donut cards with a blue background back in the box. Only have three? You don't play with the purple or the blue cards.

Each round is fast and the simultaneous gameplay keeps everyone involved. The rules are also quite simple and easy to teach, and could easily be played by families (though everyone is likely to want a donut afterwards!).

A solid drafting game, with great player interaction (though it’s definitely better with more players rather than less), Go Nuts for Donuts is fun, fast and a very sweet time!

Pros: Great player interaction, easy setup, cute artwork

Cons: Better with more players, it will make you crave delicious donuts!

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