Designed by: T. C. Petty III
Another colon and this game would drink itself.
In VivaJava: The Coffee Game: The Dice Game you are competitive brewers, trying to impress your employer (VivaJava) the most with your brewing skills and picking up performance points (PP) for doing so. How that translates to play is rolling dice, and pushing your luck.
The game is primarily dice and some coasters that represent coffee blends. Everyone has a sheet to keep track of their performance points and research points (RP). On your turn you roll the coffee bean dice and decide how to allocate them. You can choose to make a Featured Blend coffee, as long as your blend is stronger than whoever (if anyone) currently has the featured blend: there is a hierarchy to the dice similar to poker, so four of a matching bean will beat three, and three will beat two and so on. Place your dice on the featured blend coaster and score a point. If you’re lucky enough to roll five different beans, you can claim the Rainbow Blend – this also scores a point, and has the added benefit if not occupying your dice. When your turn comes around again, if you still have either blend in front of you (i.e. they’ve not been claimed by anyone else) you keep scoring points for them. If your dice are on the featured blend, you can remove them and re-roll them, or keep the featured blend (and not roll) in the hope you’ll score again for it on your next turn. Featured blends, however, degrade over time, so if you want to keep it you have to remove a die from the coaster.
But of course there will be many times when you don’t roll good enough beans to claim either blend, and thats where the research points come in – you can allot all the dice of one colour to a matching research on your score pad, filling in the tracks to record your progress. When you reach the x1 or x2 spots, you can activate special abilities, which give you more flexibility on your dice rolls. Reach the end of a research track and you can’t use that ability anymore, but you score points for it! Each game only uses five research abilities, but the box has many to choose from.
The final option is claiming flavor dice, which you can use (once) on a subsequent turn to boost your chances of a productive roll. The first player to 21pp wins the game.
There's a research that allows blocking other player's special abilities, but you can choose to play without it. Aside from that the worst that can happen is someone rolling a better blend than you.
It's a fast-moving game.
Decisions are fairly light, but although there is opportunity for luck-pushing the game does invite tactical play as well.
Enormous variety here - the research abilities mean every game plays differently, albeit you're still in a race to 21 points. We particularly like the addition of the Interns, who once you've unlocked them with your research points can give you an ongoing benefit in the game instead of the standard one-off abilities.
1-4
Players
10+
Years
30-60
Mins
Sam says
VivaJava has a lot going for it - speed of play, unique theme and a lot of replayability thanks to those research abilities (twenty to choose from!) and the optional rule of playing semi-cooperatively (you can contribute dice to others blends) as well as a solo game for those who can't get enough coffee. It was purely my enjoyment of Spires by the same designer that led me here - a very different game, but both very enjoyable.