PLAYED
DULCE
A bittersweet experience
Designer: Julio E. Nazario | Publisher: Stronghold Games
In Dulce the irresistible sweetness of the confectionery theme mixes with the puzzle and resource management mechanics to re-enact the process of making sweets. In the game, players compete to earn the most victory points by delivering the right type of ingredients to the local cafes. They will need to plant cacao, coffee, peanut, and vanilla seeds, harvest them and deliver to the cafes, trying to use every by-product of the manufacturing process to its full potential and avoid unnecessary wastage.
While sweets themselves can be considered an exuberance, Dulce is a minimalist game. Its box has a slick stylish artwork that doesn’t give much away but sets the expectations high. The game itself consists of only a few multi-functional components. The player board is used for planting fields and has two sets of score tracks. One is for the victory points, while the other tracks chicken points, which players can redeem during the game to get eggs, cubes which can be used as any resource. The cards are also multi-use. One side shows the field and what type of beans can be grown on it, while the other side represents the café. Players can also discard a card to perform the harvest action – transfer beans from the field onto their respective places on the café cards. Finally, each bean is a small cube in a pleasing pastel colour (although, depending on the lighting, they can be hard to tell apart).