Strawberry Shortcake Berry Besties Bakeoff Card Game: Would You Like Some Math With That?

We’ve got another game for review at the Millennial Nostalgia Grab Department of The Family Gamers.

She’s gone from greeting card character to multimedia franchise powerhouse. Strawberry Shortcake is suddenly everywhere again, relaunched for the fourth time (no, seriously)! Now there’s a web series, holiday-themed Netflix specials, a Care Bears crossover, enough teen and tween clothing to fill a Marshalls, and… a card game!

Designed by Shem Phillips and published by WildBrain and Maestro Media, The World of Strawberry Shortcake Berry Besties Bakeoff Card Game (from here on referred to as Berry Besties Bakeoff) is a set-making game for 2 to 6 players. It’s quick to play and uses nothing but cards.

Overview

Setup is as simple as it gets – all you have to do is draw four cards, and you’re off. Players simultaneously bid for turn order using a card in their hand. Then, they take a different card from the common tableau on the table to add to their “shortcake”. After four rounds the game ends and this shortcake will be a 4×4 grid of cards. Card rearrangement is not allowed, and plays that would go beyond the 4×4 limit are forbidden. 

Gameplay

The goal is to collect sets of characters and icons. Characters are featured on the main part of each card and icons are shown in the bottom left corner. The best cards feature multiple characters and/or icons – they typically get chosen first from the middle row.

After all players place their chosen card, those bid cards become the tableau for the next turn. Thus, there’s not much cost to bidding – you’ll have an opportunity to acquire that card soon. Lower-numbered cards beat higher, and it seems like multi-character cards are more frequent in the lower numbers. Maybe, if there’s no cards in the tableau that you really want, you might use a very high numbered card for your bid. This could save your better bids for later. And for the last turn in the round, you skip the bidding and put your hand card directly into your shortcake.

One last thing – I forgot to mention that at setup, players also draw at random one recipe card. These are missions that you try to complete by the end of the game. You only get one and there’s no penalty for failing – just four bonus points if you fulfill it. We found these were usually of medium-to-hard difficulty, but their low point value didn’t make them game-breaking. There are recipes like “have the same icon in all four corners”, and “have at least one of each character”, and “have more odd-numbered cards than even-numbered”.

Kid Play

There are three aspects to this game that limited its enjoyment with the younger players in our family. First, it’s really easy to mix up the cards you played for bidding for turn order with the tableau cards available to you for shortcake-building. We had to insist the kids play their bid cards to a far-away spot on the table. 

Second, a cardboard playing mat with the 4×4 grid printed on it would have been a tremendous help for kids. Instead, players are forced to imagine the grid in their heads as they build. I caught my 7-year-old creating a 5-width row or 5-height column on several playthroughs. She ended up frustrated that what she thought was her great scoring chance was ruined. (To be fair, the game box says for ages 8 and up).

Speaking of which – the scoring system sounds simple at first but it’s a lot of numbers to keep in your head. Rows score only for sets of matching characters – 2, 5, or 8 points for a set of 2, 3, or 4. Columns score for sets of matching icons, with the same point values.

But you can have multiple sets of characters or icons on a single row or column. Younger players would have benefited from the publishers including a scoring sheet that walks you through the math.

Dessert Served on a Times Table

When I first picked up this game, I thought for sure that my daughters would love the theme and enjoy playing. Turns out this is more a game for the adult millennial in your life. The rules are simple, the scoring is straightforward enough for adults, and if you don’t take it too seriously you can both explain and play the game in 15 minutes total. In that – it seems to best fit as a casual filler game between plays of other, heavier stuff.

But kids might be frustrated by the placement rules, draw rules, and how much they need to keep track of in their head. We recommend ages 10-12 and up.

If your nostalgia-fueled mind has an unrelenting sweet tooth, you can order your own copy of the Berry Besties Bakeoff Card Game directly from Maestro Media, or you can get it on Amazon.

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The Family Gamers received a review copy of The World of Strawberry Shortcake Berry Besties Bakeoff Card Game from Maestro Media and Flat River Group for this review.

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