S’mores Galore: Roast and Write – Outdoors for All

Everyone knows that a campfire isn’t really complete without s’mores – that gooey dessert sandwich of chocolate, marshmallow, and graham. And they’re even better when you can share the experience with friends.

In S’mores Galore: Roast and Write, you can race for the best s’mores with an unlimited number of friends. This roll-and-write game is best for ages 8 and up and plays in about 30 minutes (faster with practice). Daniel Rocchi and Ryan Sanders designed the game, and it’s published by Mighty Acorn Games in partnership with Grand Gamers Guild.

How to Play

Start by choosing which side of the player maps to use. Everyone should use the same one: the easy Tenderfoot map, or the more advanced Eagle Scout side.

Sort out the recipe cards and put a level 1, level 2, and level 3 recipe out on the table; the rest won’t be used.

Every player selects a two-ingredient combo from the bottom of their player sheet. They cross it off and draw it somewhere on the map.

Roll Dice & Draw

On a turn, roll the dice. Everyone must draw the three symbols shown onto their own sheet. The symbols don’t have to be in a straight line, but they do all need to be touching each other, and the whole thing must be somehow connected to a previously-drawn symbol.

What if the dice show an ingredient you really don’t want right now? You can “burn” one or more ingredients you don’t want on your sheet – but you’ll take a -1 penalty for each ingredient discarded this way.

Claim Bonuses

Once the three symbols have been drawn, the player checks to see if they can claim a bonus. The Tenderfoot map has two kinds: the maple leaf bonus and the campfire. Fill a row or column that shows a maple leaf to cross off one of the bonuses listed at the bottom of the sheet – a two-ingredient combo, a single wild ingredient, or +1 point.

Surround a campfire to immediately put an extra single ingredient of your choice in any valid square on the map.

The Eagle Scout map offers three additional bonuses: Trailblazing (connect north and south compass halves), Portaging (connect the river at the two corners), and Wildlife (completely surround two raccoons and “feed” them). These bonuses only give points to the first player to complete them.

Recipes

After checking for bonuses, each player can mark off any recipes they’ve finished this turn.

A straight line of ingredients that exactly matches the order on a recipe card will score for that recipe.

First, mark off one of the two scoring squares underneath each ingredient used in the recipe. Then, add a mark for the appropriate level of recipe at the bottom of the sheet.

Game End & Scoring

If a player has three or fewer empty spaces left on their sheet, they may choose to pass instead of drawing the rolled dice. If so, they proceed immediately to scoring. The game ends when everyone has passed.

Add up the points for each filled scoring square in each row of the sheet. Remember, each ingredient has two scoring squares.

Then score for each recipe mark. These score points equal to the level of the recipe.

Subtract for burned ingredients, add bonuses, and total everything for a final score.

The highest score is the most s’mor-iffic winner. If you’re playing solo, there’s a ranking from <39 (“eaten by a bear”) to 80+ (“trailblazer”).

Impressions

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Daniel Rocchi’s S’mores Galore card game. As I said on our podcast, “it’s everything I wanted a s’mores-themed game to be.” It’s little bit strategic but never mean. I hoped that S’mores Galore: Roast and Write would have the same feel.

And it does, more or less. In the original S’mores Galore, you pull ingredient cards from a 2-dimensional grid on your turn. You add them (in order) to your line – or take an action to swap their order – to fulfill a recipe before your opponent(s) can. In Roast and Write however, every player is taking the same ingredients every turn and building s’mores on their own 2D grid. In essence, you are carpeting the forest floor with s’more ingredients, trying to build out recipes both vertically and horizontally at the same time. And the recipes are static for the whole game.

On the one hand, you always have choices on where to place the symbols rolled on the dice. Unlike most roll-and-write games, there are only three options (chocolate, marshmallow, graham) and no specific order in which you must place them. On the other hand, you must arrange those three symbols in very specific ways to make the available s’more recipes and gain any points. This can lead to analysis paralysis when there are so many choices but none of them do quite what you want.

The ingredient bonuses can help you get exactly what you want, but you still have to do a lot of planning. A single mis-placed ingredient can mess up two (or more!) recipes. I might place a graham cracker in the second spot to fulfill one recipe, and end up realizing I had just blocked off the rest of that corner from ever being able to fit into a recipe. Then I felt like I was placing ingredients for no real purpose, in those few squares.

The Eagle Scout map bonuses do ameliorate that problem. These additional goals provide other ways to get points, usually by simply filling squares. And the race to be first to connect edges or corners adds more interaction to the game.

Not Much Heat

Even with racing for bonuses, S’mores Galore: Roast and Write is a very gentle game, and suitable for its stated 8+ age range. The art from Kristian Fosh is very cute and appealing. I love the varying personalities of the ingredients.

Everything is just boxes, so you don’t even have to be good at drawing! Even then, the game comes with a cute little chocolate-themed sharpener and eraser, in case you make a mistake.

There’s no time pressure or unique player goals. And only the Eagle Scout goals involve any direct competition with your fellow players. Really, everyone just tries to make their own best grid of s’mores.

I don’t think S’mores Galore: Roast and Write will stay in my collection. Mostly because I prefer the slightly more direct competition and larger variety of recipes in the original S’mores Galore card game.

But if you’d like to make a s’mores carpet with up to 100 of your closest friends, you can get S’mores Galore: Roast and Write directly from Grand Gamers Guild, or look for it at your local games store or outdoors store.

---

The Family Gamers received S’mores Galore: Roast and Write from Mighty Acorn Games for this review.