Once a month, Miriam and Georgia give themselves one hour to develop a new board game concept based on a handful of prompts they come up with beforehand. Below is an overview of Burrito (aka Untitled Burrito Project), our tactile family puzzle game.
THE ELEVATOR PITCH
Burrito is a stylish, 2 – 4 player family-friendly strategy/dexterity game with a jigsaw element, themed around creating the most artistic burrito!
Important elements:
- Each round is played as a ‘layer’, and points scored on the layer underneath directly affect the layer above
- Burrito pieces are chosen from a shrinking pool which is replenished each round
THE LOOK
This is a tactile game made of fabric and wood. Every element is decorated with patterns, images or symbology deriving from Mexican art, and made by Mexican artists, ranging from traditional-style print patterns to textures and paintings. The game uses a limited palette of rich shades for a warm and cohesive feel.
The components include:
- 4 player mats with a circular ‘tortilla’ area, and 16 roughly evenly spaced “grill marks”
- A score pad
- 300 abstractly (or roughly figurative) shaped, ½ inch thick wooden pieces, divided into three round groups:
Round 1 – smaller, white and dark green, ‘rice’ pieces
Round 2 – small/medium, orange and brown, ‘protein’ pieces
Round 3 – medium/large, yellow and light green, ‘topping’ pieces
Each wooden piece has between one and three small symbols (skulls/chilli peppers/flowers?) known as a ‘mark’ on each flat side.
THE AIM
The goal is to be the player with the most points at the end of the game.
Play takes place over three rounds, with each round being a ‘layer’ of a player’s burrito. Players draft and arrange pieces on their player mat to maximise their score. At the end of each round, a player’s score is the total marks on the top layer of their burrito, MINUS the marks visible on the layer beneath (if this is the first round, the grill marks on your tortilla count for this).
Additionally, players may choose to vote on a ‘beauty bonus’ number of points for the player with the most aesthetically pleasing burrito each round.
TURNS
On their turn a player drafts two pieces from the available pool, discards one, and plays one into their burrito. Played pieces must not overlap the edge of the burrito and must be fully supported by the layer underneath them.
Round 1 uses only the Round 1 ‘rice’ pieces. At the beginning of Round 2, the Round 2 ‘protein’ pieces will be added to the pool, and so on. This keeps the pool wide and varied enough to give plenty of choice.
SUMMARY
Players draft and play pieces carefully into their burrito to maximise their score. At the end of Round 3, the scores from all rounds are totalled (plus ‘beauty bonuses’ if given) and the player with the highest score is victorious.
WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THIS GAME?
Burrito is an aesthetically striking game which combines strategy, spatial awareness, dexterity and creativity.
- Self-balancing layer-based scoring system using marks. This can be reversed to create a more competitive play variant
- ‘Jigsaw’ element and large number of pieces create lots of uncertainty and possibilities
Big Crow Games 