Critter Kitchen

Critter Kitchen is set up by placing the central Beastro Bay board, revealing the first challenge card, placing a Beast Token in the soup truck, and populating locations with ingredient tokens from the bag. Each player receives a restaurant board, a hand of location cards, three chefs of different sizes and speeds, and a hidden soup token. Optional asymmetric restaurant tour cards and zoo chefs add unique starting bonuses and temporary helpers.

Players act as restaurant owners in Beastro Bay over the course of seven rounds. The main goal is to earn the most stars, which serve as victory points. Players strategically deploy chefs to gather ingredients, participate in timed food challenges, collect secret rumor tokens, and finally prepare an elaborate meal for an asymmetric celebrity critic.

Each of the seven rounds has a planning and shopping phase. During planning, players secretly assign location cards to their three chefs, factoring in speed and carrying capacity. Chefs are then resolved from left to right across Beastro Bay locations. Faster mouse chefs pick first, followed by lizards and slower boars, with turn priority breaking ties. Leftover items move to the Chef Academy or soup truck.

Scoring occurs at the end of rounds three and six through food challenges, where players spend specific ingredient sets to earn stars based on total token values. The final scoring happens after round seven, where players prepare a final meal for the celebrity critic using one ingredient of each type, adding spices, applying secret rumor bonuses, and checking end-game criteria.

The game concludes after the seventh round following the final celebrity critic meal and rumor reveal. Players tally all accumulated stars on their player boards. The restaurant owner with the highest total score wins and is named the best restaurant in Beastro Bay.