Gather your favorite recipes, bakers! It’s time to compete to create the perfect pie, piece by piece!
What is Piece of Pie?
Piece of Pie is a drafting game where players will create their personal pie by drafting one piece at a time, hoping to earn the most points.
How do you play?
The game starts with four pies in the center. The starting token shows you which pieces of each complete pie are available to be selected. Once the pie has been cut into, you must choose from one o the next pieces, going either clockwise or counterclockwise, from the missing piece. (Just like you would with a real pie!)
If this is your first turn, you’ll place the piece in front of you. For all other turns, you’ll place either new piece directly net to a piece already in your pie.
Which pieces you draft and where you place them is important!
Every player is dealt a Perfect Piece card. This gives players one point for each piece of pie that matches the flavor on their card.
May pie pieces also have decorations on them, (chocolate, whipped cream, cookies) and these will earn you points on your completed pie.
There are also unique recipe and pattern cards!
At the start of the game, players choose one recipe and one pattern card. These cards award points to the players who are able to build a personal pie that meets the flavor and pattern requirements.
Once everyone’s pies are complete, the game is over! Each player adds up how many points their pie is worth based on the cards in play.
The player with the highest score is declared the winner and is awarded the title of Best Pastry Chef of the Year!
What do we think?
This is a very cute game and it looks great on the table! Blue Orange Games continues to make quality looking games that play great too and Piece of Pie is no exception. The colors are beautiful and the pieces are so cute.
While it looks great, also I think Piece of Pie does a few things really well as a game:
It is lightning fast to play, it’s easy to include younger children, and while allowing that, it still manages to maintain a nice level of strategy to challenge grade school aged kids!
The mechanics of Piece of Pie are friendly enough that our four year old can play independently along with the whole family. In fact, its not uncommon for him to pull out a victory! He does a great job of focusing on the decorations and his “Perfect Piece” and does really well!
For older kids, I really like the light introduction to drafting. There are only 8 total pieces on your pie, so every piece you draft is important. Piece of Pie provides a great first step not only into drafting but also learning how to change your plans quickly.
If you are planning on taking a piece that gets drafted by another player before your turn, you quickly need to reassess what pieces are available. I like watching my kids decide if its better to abandon their plan entirely or wait patiently, perhaps building in a different direction and waiting for another chance. There’s also a balance to when you take a piece because it might open up another piece that is helpful to an opponent, or one that you need but may be unable to get on your next turn.
Making these decisions and considering all of these options helps kids sharpen their critical thinking skills without getting too heavy in strategy or ever feeling unfriendly. Even when a pie piece you want gets taken, there’s usually still another option that you can make work.
I greatly love how quickly this game plays. When it comes to games for kids, playing quick is a must. There’s nothing worse than a game that overstays its welcome and Piece of Pie plays in the perfect amount of time. Each game takes about 10 minutes or less! This makes it a wonderful choice for a quick game to get out while waiting for dinner or before bedtime. It’s also easy to play two or three games in a row to let kids have a chance to improve on their skills. I love the ability to play a second game right away so that if there was something they learned the first go-round they can put it to practice the second.
There’s not much to dislike here. The game is well made with nice thick cardboard pie pieces and decent variety in the recipe and flavor cards. It certainly would be too light to play with your adult game group, but for kids, these pies hit the spot.
A little bit of learning too!
Piece of Pie is also a great game to sneak in a little bit of fraction work!
Right now we are working on fractions in math with our daughter Alice and this is the perfect game to play while working in some of those fraction terms. Even if you have younger children who aren’t ready for fractions in their math class, it’s never too early to start introduction fraction language.
During play, ask your kids how much of their pie they have completed. How does that change when they add each piece? Show why it’s called 1/8th and how, when the pie is complete you have all 8 pieces to create a whole. There are a lot of ways to show fractions!
Doing this not only makes fractions a visible thing since they can see the pies changing as they add or remove pie pieces, but it also makes the concept of fractions more inviting when its presented in a fun manner through a game.
Summary
Piece of Pie is a deliciously light filler game that is perfect for kids. There’s enough here to provide a challenge for kids without intimidating them or making it so that younger children can’t join in. This is a game that the whole family can enjoy playing together!
But be warned: you’re sure to want to make your own pie after playing!
If you think Piece of Pie would be a great fit for your family, you can find it on Blue Orange Games’ website!
For more of our favorite picks for kids games, like Piece of Pie, be sure to check out our Amazon Storefront!
A special thank you to Blue Orange Games for providing us a copy of Piece of Pie for review. As always, our thoughts and opinions are our own.
Game Info:
Title: Piece of Pie
2-4 players 8+
Designer: Trevor Benjamin, Brett J. Gilbert
Publisher: Blue Orange Games
Published: 2020
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