Theme: Food / Cooking

New version of the Spiel des Jahres Recommended Big Points with a new theme, more engaging components, and rule tweak cards to make sure every play is different.

Four page illustrated rulebook. 20min play time. Highly interactive with no direct conflict.

Players move ants along a trail and collect food as they go. However, the value of that food depends on how the other ants move.

Shared incentives mean you are always trying to figure out what the other players are up to. Variable "rules cards" tweak the rules to every game so that each play is fresh.

During setup, a trail of food is laid out. On each player's turn, they can move any ant to the next food in the trail that matches their color (red ant to apple, purple ant to grapes, etc). Then the player takes the food token directly in front of or behind the ant, saving it to score at the end of the game.

However, players don't know for sure how much the food is going to be worth until the matching ant makes it to the ant hill at the end of the trail. This creates shared incentives as players work together to advance some ants and hold others back.

Along the way players also have the chance to pick up chocolate, which can be turned into special actions, and wine, which provides a way to score bonus points.

There are four decks of cards that define the rules for the game. Each game, one card is chosen from each deck to provide a unqiue combination. Players have to adapt their strategy to the actions the other players are taking and the unique rules for this game. The "rule decks" are:

Ant Hill - Food tokens are worth more points if the matching ant gets to the hill FIRST. Or, food tokens are worth more points if the matching ants get to the ant hill LAST.
Wine - The wine tokens have a different way of scoring in every game.
Chocolate - The chocolate tokens provide a different special power in every game. And, the best way to use that power will change based on the other special rules in play.
Variant - One special rule that applies to this game which offers an extra twist.

Your actions will change the incentives for the other players. Can you manage these cascading effects to collect the most valuable food collection?

Once upon a time in the Far East, deep in the mountains of a mythical land, there was a world-renowned Dim Sum restaurant by the name of Steam Up.

It was the first restaurant of its kind to achieve the three Gold Ingot status. According to the Gold Ingot Guide, Steam Up was best known for its top 5 most popular Dim Sum: juicy shrimp dumpling, tender meat dumpling, soft and fluffy BBQ meat bun, flavorful sticky rice, and exotic phoenix claw. These heavenly tastes drew food enthusiasts and gourmets from all over the world!

Come join us on a feast of Dim Sum. You are invited!

Steam Up: A Feast of Dim Sum is a competitive 2-5 player light-medium weight Dim Sum set collection and action management game offering a delicious cultural experience.

At the beginning of the game, steamers, filled with different types of Dim Sum, are stacked and placed on a Turntable. Each player takes turns performing 2 different actions each round. Actions include gaining and spending food tokens to purchase Dim Sum in Steamers within their Feast Zone. Players may also play Fortune cards to benefit themselves or affect their opponents. Starting the 2nd round, a Fate card is revealed each round to trigger an event that may affect all players.

The game ends when a specific number of Steamers is purchased or the Fate deck is emptied. Final scoring is then calculated. The player with the most Hearty Points wins and leaves the table with the fullest stomach!

The Atiwa Range is a region of southeastern Ghana in Africa consisting of steep-sided hills with rather flat summits. A large portion of the range comprises an evergreen forest reserve, which is home to many endangered species. However, logging and hunting for bushmeat, as well as mining for gold and bauxite, are putting the reserve under a lot of pressure.

Meanwhile, in the nearby town of Kibi, the mayor is causing a stir by giving shelter to a large number of fruit bats in his own garden. This man has recognized the great value the animals have in deforested regions of our planet: Fruit bats sleep during the day and take off at sunset in search of food, looking for suitable fruit trees up to sixty miles away. They excrete the seeds of the consumed fruit, disseminating them across large areas as they fly home. A single colony of 150,000 fruit bats can reforest an area of up to two thousand acres a year.

Just like that mayor, in Atiwa, you know that fruit bats — once scorned and hunted as mere fruit thieves — are in fact incredibly useful animals, spreading seeds over large areas of the country. By doing so, they help to reforest fallow land and, in the medium term, improve harvests. This realization has led to a symbiotic co-operation between fruit bats and fruit farmers. The animals are kept as "pets" to increase the size of fruit farms more quickly. Tall trees are left as roosts, providing shelter for them rather than hunting them for their scant meat. However, if you have a lot of fruit bats, you need a lot of space...

In the game, you will develop a small community near the Atiwa Range, creating housing for new families and sharing your newly gained knowledge on the negative effects of mining and the importance that the fruit bats have for the environment. You must acquire new land, manage your animals and resources, and make your community prosper. The player who best balances the needs of their community and the environment wins.

In Yak, the village elder has given you (and others) the task of constructing a great stone tower to guide the merchants and their yaks in the Himalayas. Each turn, a yak pulls its cart into your village. Will you find stones for your tower, or food for your reserves? Or will you need to visit the market to find what you need?

Over the course of the game, each player builds their own stone tower by acquiring stones from visiting merchants. You start the game with one good of each type (meat, milk, bread) and three cards in hand: build, restock, and market. Three or four carts being pulled by yaks start on the game board, with each player having one cart in front of them and each cart containing three stones and some food. Each cart has a restriction on it, e.g., "no bread" because its yak is gluten intolerant.

On a turn, all players choose a card in hand simultaneously and place it face-down. Starting with whoever holds the baby yak token, players then take their turns in order by revealing their card. If you played:

Build: Spend 1-5 food tokens, placing them in the cart in front of you, to buy 1-3 stones from that cart. You must follow the restriction on that cart. (No meat for the vegetarian yak, please!) If you acquire crystal stones, you must pay one extra food for each such stone. Place the stones in your tower, with all stones after your first needing to touch. Your tower is at most five stones wide.

Restock: Take all the food of one type from the cart in front of you and add it to your reserves up to your limit of eight items of food. Then draw a stone from the quarry bag and place it in the cart. (A cart can hold at most four stones.)

Market: Take two food items of your choice from the market, which starts with two foods of each type and which is refilled only when a cart exceeds its nine-food limit during a build action. Then draw three stones from the bag, place one in a cart of your choice, then return the other two to the bag.

Stones come in eight colors, with eight of each in the bag. Eight crystal stones are also in the bag, along with five fog stones. Whenever fog stones are drawn, all players reverse the direction of all the carts, then the active player sets the fog aside and draws replacement stones, with carts reversing again should fog be drawn anew. Once the right number of non-fog stones have been drawn, place the fog stones on the mountain track. This track will be filled twice during the game, after which only a single fog will remain in the bag.

To end a round, return your chosen card to your hand, move the yak carts one space in the direction they face, then pass the baby yak clockwise. Continue playing rounds until someone completes the fourth level of their tower. Complete that round, play one additional round, then score the towers. A crystal stone can be a color of your choice, but each crystal in your tower must be a different color. You score points (1) for each group of two or more stones (e.g., a group of six is worth 16 points), (2) for the number of groups of at least two or more stones, (3) for individual stones (only 1 point each), (4) for triggering the end of the game, and (5) for having the most remaining food.

For an additional challenge, play Yak with the "master builder" variant. Reveal three of the eight objective cards at the start of play. By having the most non-crystal stones of a color or placing them in certain locations in your tower, you score additional points.

Rush to prepare and slurp up delicious bowls of ramen filled with tasty ingredients in the use-your-noodle card game Ramen Fury. Collect combos of cards to score for different recipes while adding garnishes to boost your points. At the same time, watch out as other players throw spicy chili peppers your way or swipe foods right from your bowls! It's "take that" fun that will have you calling for takeout!

—description from the publisher