Game Overview

Cacao is a tile laying game where players build a shared board. The gameplay is very reminiscent of Carcassonne, except that your workers are directly on the player tiles you place. On a turn, the player has a choice of three Worker tiles, which will have varying numbers of workers present on each edge of the tile. When the tile is placed, those workers can engage with jungle tiles alongside them, whether that be harvesting cacao, selling at market, collecting water, or other abilities.

When a Worker tile is place in such a way that causes an empty
Jungle space to be bordered by two or more Worker tiles, that Jungle space must be filled. There is a pool of up to two Jungle tiles which can be chosen to fill the spot. The player chooses one and then if another Jungle space needs filled, the other (if available – these will run out) is used to fill that space.

One of the more interesting elements of the game are sun tokens, which are gained through Jungle tiles (as everything is), and which allow you to place another tile on top of an already placed tile. This lets you revisit spaces deep in the interior of the board later in the game for additional resources or actions.

General Impressions

Compared to the frenetic pace of a game of Captain Flip, Cacao is a stately affair. Players know what worker tiles they have remaining in their pool, and to some extent what jungle tiles their opponents will have to work with. This adds a lot more strategy to the game. That said, the game still plays fairly quick, running about 20 minutes in my BGA sessions.

Cacao does suffer some luck elements, as if a crucial jungle tile flips for your opponent and they are able to capitalize on it, that can be very hard to overcome. It’s also rough to have access to a premium jungle tile but only have poor Worker tiles. The combination of random tiles in two pools can be unfortunate, and the game offers only the sun tokens as mitigation against this.

It seems that the vital strategy aspect of the game is to maximize your cacao harvest and sale to premium markets. Every game I have played has been won through cacao sale advantage. Second most important is ensuring you get at least some water access, as the resource gain for water increases in value the more you gain, and starts you in the negative.

I have only played at two players, and I think it would be much more interesting at higher player counts, as there will be more contesting of critical Jungle tiles, and more dynamism around how the board takes shape. I also have not had an opportunity to play with the expansion, which I have heard improves the nature of decision making and risk taking, which probably would enhance the game a lot.

BGA Particulars

Cacao has had one Board Game Arena aspect that has been unique so far in the games I’ve played, and that is that it’s been tough to find games. I’ve often waited long periods with a game up and no takers. Tables created by others are fairly rare. I’ve still been able to get quite a few plays in, but it’s not usually a trivial matter to fire up the app and play. This shouldn’t be terribly surprising. There’s definitely not dozens or hundreds of people chomping at the bit to play all of the nearly 1000 games available on BGA.

Other than that, the biggest aid for this game when playing on BGA is that it handles all of the end game scoring (temple scoring is a little fiddly). It’s also nice not to have to shuffle tiles, which I find particularly…unsatisfying.

Fun Factor

As I mentioned above, playing Cacao tends to be pretty stately and methodical. There are few dramatic moments, and everything is a grind toward the end, where all the math tells the winner. The game state, scoring, and even what pieces you and your opponents still have access to are completely calculable on any given turn. That is an interesting dynamic for sure, but doesn’t scream fun.

Next Up

The next game that I’ll be spotlighting is near and dear to my heart for it’s theme, Bonsai. I love the stunning visual nature of a perfect bonsai tree, and have interest in getting into that hobby myself, so this game is right up my alley. This also happens to be a game I own in physical form. It’s full release is fairly new to BGA, so check it out too!