Let’s switch gears and push forward towards the complex and niche side of the boardgames spectrum. That's where you will find Food Chain Magnate (FCM).
At first sight, it feels like an unsavory gaming experience: expensive (like all Splotter games), complex, lengthy, cut-throat, brutally unforgiving and judging by its "grey-town” tiles, looking more like a game prototype.
Still, If you and your colleagues like to compete and test your wits in an intricate and demanding business game, it will be worth your while. Feel free to unwrap and bite into FCM, you will be in for a delightful treat. FCM is a difficult, involved, highly interactive business simulation game. It’s set in and made to look like the 1950s. A delightful celebration of the nascent fast food industry.
In this 3-5 players game, you play as the CEO of your own burgeoning fast food franchise. Like a good capitalist game, your objective is to create, monopolize and fulfill as much demand as possible, making the biggest pile of money at the end of the game. In every round, you will manage every marketing and operations decision of your food chain. From which employees to hire, employ, train or fire, to what kind of marketing campaigns to run (billboards, direct mail, airplane or radio?) in order to create demand in the neighboring hood(s). You will also need to send your staff to collect drinks, hire chefs to cook burgers or pizza while able to fulfill all the demand at the best price and/or buy hot estate for your new franchise location…
What I come to appreciate about this game is that 1) every game is different, there is no set or path or winning formula 2) every decision feels thematic and critical, even before your first turn. In the setup phase, placing the first restaurant, it’s highly influenced, limited and determined by your competitor moves. It forces players to define an initial strategy around those. At the same time, they might nudge you towards certain ‘milestones’ cards. These ‘milestones’ are another unique mechanism that adds to that critical decision-making element. Why? It’s uniquely rewarded to only the player(s) who meet the criteria to "win" a particular milestone card that offers exclusive and permanent benefits over the rest of players, for the remainder of the game. These are game-changing and key to winning.
As you can see in the "player menu" above, the career path of your staff and the number of milestones, that I have hardly scratched the surface with the explanation above. Shut Up and Sit Down, my favorite boardgame critics, have a raving and highly entertaining video review of FCM here. Surely, I have not made justice to this Michelin-star worthy game. A game that goes deep into subtleties and flavours that only an absolute minority will appreciate. Bon appetit!