| 👨👩👧👦 | Players: 1-5 |
| ⏳ | Time: 30 mins |
| 🎂 | Ages: 8+ |
| ⚙️ | Mechanisms: Dice drafting, Set Collection, Combo Seeking |
Are you ready to Wok and Roll (and write)!!?? grab your guitar frypan, start your stove and get ready to cook up a storm!
Wok and Roll is a cute and compact roll-and-write game from Origame, a Singaporean publisher that has recently started to bring their games to the west. I was lucky enough to meet Daryl Chou, the designer of all the games in the Origame catalogue at PAX Australia in 2023. Wok and Roll gives each player a menu card filled with uncooked dishes. Players collect ingredients from the dice which are rolled each turn, and use them to try and cook as many dishes as they can before the game ends – trying to get the most points from making the most delicious meals!
The production of Wok and Roll is lovely, with a lot of care put into the theming of the game. The box is styled to look like a classic Asian take-out menu, with the player sheets being illustrated to look like the menus you might find in a more traditional Asian restaurant. The dice feature full colour heat-transfer printed decals and my favourite touch – a tiny Wok is built into the box for you to safely roll your dice in without getting your ingredients all over the table! The rules are well written with several pictorial examples throughout. We had no trouble getting into the game within a few minutes.
Wok and Roll features two levels of ‘challenge’ – Appetiser and Dessert. We went straight to the more advanced ‘dessert’ mode which includes a few extra mechanics to make the game more interesting. I would describe the ‘advanced’ mode of the game as still an entry level roll-and-write game, something that gives a good taste of the genre and will help to get new players addicted to the format so you can get them playing Hadrian’s Wall and Twilight Inscription. The game features satisfying combos, a fun amount of mean player interaction, and some interesting decisions around which path to progress along as rewards can be short term or long term. I think my only complaint would be the quality of the included pens … however if you’ve played a few of these sorts of games you come to expect this – I have my own set of nicer dry erase pens.
Wok and Roll is a fun little roll-and-write game. It doesn’t outstay its welcome and it’s delightfully produced. If you haven’t played a roll-and-write style game before this would certainly be a good ‘first game’ to dip your toes in the soup with. If you are interested you can find out more on the Origame Store!
The copy of Wok and Roll used for this review was provided to The Boardgame Detective by Origame
The Boardgame Detective 