Cupcake Empire

Players run a small bakery and expand into a cupcake business across the city. The game uses dice as workers assigned to columns on a personal board; each column performs a specific action such as developing recipes, opening shops, serving customers, or hiring staff. Players place and specialize dice to boost the effectiveness of those actions, manage production and sales tracks that advance at different rates, and gain income based on the lesser-progressing track each turn. Competition with other players and efficient worker deployment drive the race to grow a balanced, profitable operation.

Players: 2–4 best 4
Playing time: 45–60 min
Age: 10+
Complexity: 2.8 / 5

5.5 on Ludoya from $40.29EconomicIndustry / ManufacturingDice RollingWorker PlacementWorker Placement with Dice Workers

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About the game

Design: Yves Tourigny
Al Leduc
Art: Amanda Duarte

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Full stats in Ludoya

96
Plays logged: 64
Players: 23m 1s
Average play: 20
In collections: 1
On wishlists

5.5/10

from 11 Ludoya reviews

Evan4.6
This is a fast efficiency game where players are trying to be the first to hit 70 points. On your turn you choose an action on your player board with enough dice in the matching column to reach one of the activation spaces. Then you resolve that action, any free actions you get from having placed bonus markers in the column, then roll all the dice from that column placing them in whatever new columns reflect their values. Colored dice that match the color of the column are special and let you reach the better, further down versions of the actions faster. You have two markers at the bottom of your board that get increased in different ways, but you want to be as efficient as possible as at the end of every turn you get an income in points equal to your lower of the two markers. Then there are bonuses for delivering to difficult locations on the central board, and for completing the four special achievement tiles. Every action counts, and the game ends much faster than you think it will from looking at the rules overhead. You are largely at the mercy of the dice you roll, but there are special actions you can take to mitigate your luck. Additionally when a 6 is rolled it locks for the turn, but then you can efficiently move all your 6s to a single action on the next turn helping you make an action decision rather than just playing opportunistically. It's an interesting puzzle that could have benefited from another 15 min of game time, and another layer of active decision points to give it just a touch more player agency beyond deciding where and when to move your 6s. There's a little more to it than what I'm describing, but the player interactive elements are quite minor outside of a point of income here or there, unless you are at the level of identifying from across the table which delivery spaces you and your opponent are in direct contention for, and you line up a move to bump them out of the column, but I have trouble imagining being at that point and then having the die luck line up just so. Maybe with more plays, but I'm not sure the depth of the game is such to warrant that much familiarity with the system. Time will tell. :star: Art, Iconography and components functional :star: Clever or interesting mechanisms :star: Reasonably low downtime between turns with mildly AP players :nostar: Multiple plays stay interesting :nostar: Low or mitigatable luck elements :star::star::star::star::nostar: Raw enjoyment
Toni Cutillas7.0
- Base -
Fernando Arbeiza7.0
Julia