Bubble Tea: Shaken boba, not stirred

I love boba. Growing up in Los Angeles with predominantly Asian friends, we didn’t say, let’s get coffee. Nope, instead we’d say, let’s get boba, also known as bubble tea in other parts of the world. For the unfamiliar, boba are marble-sized tapioca balls that you can order in a drink, drinks such as milk teas and slushies, in all sorts of flavors as well as other add-on toppings. My personal favorite is taro milk tea with boba. So yummy!

So you can imagine my excitement when I found out that Renegade Game Studios has a new game called Bubble Tea, another real-time game by Aza Chen, complete with the adorable animal artwork that he’s also known for. He’s also the designer of one of my favorite games of 2017, Shiba Inu House.

Coming out in July, Bubble Tea is a 20-minute game for 1-5 players. The game comes with wooden dice, Customer cards, Tea Base cards, Moji Moji cards (which are these transparent square tiles for layering ingredients), and a drink shaker! Just like when you order boba and they mix up your drink at the cafe, so will you, except with dice that feature drink ingredients drawn as cute animal characters. Characters such as the Milk Tea Cow, the Green Tea Frog, the Tapioca Dog, and the Taro Ball Bear.

Bubble Tea is actually two games in one, which was a pleasant surprise! In both games, players are trying to craft the best drinks the fastest and get the most victory points. The first game actually involves shaking up the dice in the drink shaker. The current player places the dice inside the shaker and shakes them up. They flip over the shaker, the dice land on the table and then everyone yells, “1, 2, 3, Go!” to start.

Simultaneously, players are trying to match the tea base and ingredients shown on the dice by arranging and stacking the Moji Moji cards on their Tea Base card. This is trickier than it sounds because the nine Moji Moji cards that each player has are all unique, with different ingredients situated in various squares. The Tea Base cards are gridded, so you’ll have to arrange the transparent cards on top of each other in varying orientations, while following the grid on the Tea Base card, to match the dice that have just been tossed out of the shaker.

When a player finishes their drink, they take the shaker lid and cover the dice. Players check to see if they made the drink correctly, and if they did, they gain a Customer card. If that player didn’t make the drink correctly, they lose a Customer card and the other players continue playing. The game ends when a player gets three Customer cards.

For the second game, players are again simultaneously competing, this time to complete their Customer cards and gain victory points. In this game, you don’t need the dice, just the shaker, which will sit in the middle of the table. Each player draws 5 Customer cards and place one card of their choice face down in front of them. When everyone is ready, they all say, “1, 2, 3, Go!” and flip over their chosen card. Just like in Game #1, players must arrange their transparent Moji Moji cards onto the correct Tea Base card, according to what their Customer card is asking for.

The player to finish their drink first grabs the shaker. Game play stops, and they check the player’s card to see if they have the right number and type of ingredients in their drink as well as the correct Tea Base card used. If they did, they flip over the Customer card for VPs. The harder the drink, the more VPs it’s worth. If the player incorrectly created their drink, the round continues until someone correctly makes their drink.

At the end of the round, everyone passes the leftover cards from their hand to the player on the left. This game ends after five rounds, when there are no more cards to pass. The player with the most points wins the game.

Bubble Tea is so fun, and I just love, love, love the theme! Seeing a mainstream board game company create a game about a possibly niche food theme — but one that’s been a major part of my life — just warms my heart.

Bubble Tea is perfect to bust out with your friends at the boba cafe or when you need a quick filler for up to five people. The artwork is colorful and adorable, and having an actual shaker is just super duper cool, even if the dice can be a little bit loud when you’re tossing them around. But it doesn’t matter, because that action is such a small part of one game, and more often than not, you’re just frantically working to place that Sugar Monkey in that one sweet spot on your Tea Base card.

Thanks Renegade Game Studios for sending me a copy of this game!