Chocoly – playing with chocolate!

Grab yourself a tasty chocolate bar, sit back, and enjoy it while you read our review of Chocoly by FoxMind.

Because, as the name implies, this family board game is about chocolate.

And we love chocolate!

We also love tile-laying board games. And that’s exactly what Chocoly is!

We enjoy playing tile-laying games because we get to take an active role in building the outcome as we go. It’s fun to see the result when we’re done and know it turned out that way because of our choices.

And even though Chocoly doesn’t use real chocolate in the game, we still have fun playing.

 

How to play Chocoly

As already mentioned, Chocoly is a tile-laying board game.

In the game, each player is a particular type of chocolate — white chocolate, dark chocolate, or milk chocolate.

Players take turns playing tiles to the growing mass of mixed chocolate in the center of the table as they try to amass the largest connect area of their color chocolate. Because if they can make theirs the largest, they’ll win the game.

To begin, each player gets 3 red markers and draws 4 tiles from the face down tile draw pile.

Each tile has 4 chocolate pieces in different configurations of white, dark, and milk chocolate.

The first player chooses one tile from their hand and plays it face up in the center of the table. When they place their first tile, they also announce which type of chocolate they’ll be.

Then they draw another tile to their hand and play continues to the next player.

The second player choose a tile from their hand and places it adjacent to the first tile so that at least one chocolate piece on the placed tile connects to an identical chocolate piece already on the table. The new tile must be fully aligned with at least two chocolate pieces.

Upon placing the tile, the second player also announces which type of chocolate they’ll be for the game. They likewise draw another tile to add to their hand.

In a 3-player game, the 3rd player automatically becomes the last type of chocolate. They take their turn just like the second player by placing a tile from their hand adjacent to the already existing tiles on the table.

(A 4-player game is played in teams of 2 each.)

However, once there are two or more tiles on the table, when a player places a tile, the new tile may span the edge of more than one tile — as long as the new tile is still fully aligned with at least two chocolate pieces, and at least one of which matches in type.

Play continues in this manner for the rest of the game with one exception.

Three times during the game, each player may stack one of their tiles on top of already played tiles.

And believe us, you’ll definitely want to do this!

By placing on top of other tiles, players will be able to break up their opponents’ large areas and extend their own.

In placing a tile on top of others, the new tile must overlap at least two tiles, must still connect with at least one piece of similar chocolate below, and can’t stick out beyond existing tiles.

Once a player places a tile on top of others, that player places one of their red markers on top of the tile. This does a couple of things. First, shows that the player has used one of their 3 times to make such a placement. And second, it serves as a reminder that no other tile can be placed on top of that tile.

Once all 36 tiles have been placed, the game ends.

Players count up the number of chocolate pieces in their largest area of connected chocolate and compare. The player with the largest area wins!

If it’s a tie, tied players compare their second-largest areas and so on down until there’s a clear winner.

 

Can the whole family enjoy playing Chocoly?

Chocoly is a fun game for family play because of how simple it is to play while also presenting a mental challenge.

Even young kids can easily understand the matching nature of playing chocolate tiles.

However, that’s not all there is to it.

Getting the largest area of chocolate will take some planning and maneuvering.

Yet, even still kids shouldn’t have trouble figuring out how to make their chocolate areas grow.

Another reason it’s great for family play is because it has a good balance of strategy and luck.

Drawing tiles will always come down to luck.

But since players will have 4 tiles in hand (during the majority of the game) from which to choose, they’ll be able to mitigate that luck with strategic placements.

And having the ability to place tiles on top of other tiles 3 times during the game increases the strategic portion of the game.

Depending on the age of your children, you can also choose how difficult you want to make it for them. Playing without the ability to place on top of other tiles is completely up to you.

We know how it can be when a child is building something and then a parent comes along and breaks it up by covering up a portion of it. It may not go over so well with the young tikes.

We’ll let you be the judge of that for your family. 🙂

 

How does Chocoly score on our “Let’s Play Again” game meter?

Chocoly scores high on our “let’s play again” game meter because it’s such a straight-forward and quick game to play.

Players have a simple goal of increasing the size of their chocolate areas while blocking others from doing the same. There aren’t tough decisions to make each turn, so the game play goes very quickly.

Yes, as the size gets bigger, there are more options in where to place tiles, but the choices still don’t take a long time to make.

So when one game ends, it’s easy to just shuffle the tiles and play again.

Just remember, if you’re going to play Chocoly, you may want to make sure you have some real chocolate nearby as well. Because you may find yourself salivating for a chocolaty taste while you play.

Thanks FoxMind for this fun family game!