Halfling Feast Review

Who ate all the pies? Who ate all the pies? You fat Halfling you fat Halfling, you ate all the pies! Which in Halfling Feast is actually a good thing, because the aim of the game is to cram as much food down your face hole as possible.

Halfling Feast is a game about a hairy footed eating contest, you have to scoff the most dishes without getting full and avoiding your opponents' sneaky tricks. It's an unbelievably simple game to play and goes faster than a tray of hot cakes due to its limited ‘take one action per turn’ aspect of the game.

Simply put you'll either be grabbing a tasty dish off the table, playing an action to hinder an opponent or making room in your overstretched belly to cram in more food. Bigger dishes garner you more points but also take up more room in your stomach, so you're going to have to balance munching on dishes and making some room.

More stomach space can be achieved by taking a breather, sneaking out to the outhouse, or letting off a giant stinky fart, and that simple concept lets you know the level of humour in Halfling Feast. Whether it's jokes about Elvin Waybread or the concept of belly blessing belches, Halfling Feast's tone is all about a bit of fun.

There are some neat little tricks to play, as Adam Richman say, "practise safe eating, always use a condiment", and a spot of Boradul Bumbles’s Brandy Cream, can certainly help down an otherwise belt breaking dish. You could also cast a Spell of Expansion or use a magical potion of devouring to increase your belly size. These are the main. I can't say meat so let's say, eating implements of the game. They add some much needed variety to the tactical buffet but sometimes you'll be sacrificing eating a dish in order to gain a card, and that's not always the best choice.

Even with all these options available, you can't get away from the fact that Halfling Feast is a very light game. With a full four player compliment, you can dust off a game in 10 minutes or less, and those 10 minutes are made up of some simple choices. The simplicity is what makes Halfling Feast move along so quickly and whether that is a good or bad thing is really up to you and your gaming group. For a group of hardcore gamers the meat to gravy ratio of the pies was all wrong but with a group of casual gamers, friends and family, they will eat up the simple decision making and humour.

Halfling Feast is an entertaining and quick game but that comes at a price of the game being extremely light. There are some tactical shenanigans to be had, but your options each turn are very limited, which is what leads to the game's fast action and short game length. There's some straightforward fun to be had but Halfling Feast never pretends to be more than the simple and fast, light filler game that it is.

This review is based on a full retail copy of the game provided by the publisher.