Fold-It Review

When it comes to cooking, I am definitely no master chef. Up until recently, ‘cooking’ for me consisted of merely putting frozen food into the oven…. Don’t judge! I am taking strides to expand my culinary skills though, so slowly but surely I’ll become a (hopefully) decent chef. That being said, when I saw a cute little food game called Fold-It, I figured that I should at least be able to handle these game recipes. Does it hit the spot, or does it get the chop?

Fold-It is a real-time dexterity puzzle game in which players are trying to fold their Recipe Cloth to match the current Order Card. Setup is simple – give each player a Recipe Cloth and 3 Star Tokens. Choose whether you want to play with the Basic or Advanced Order Cards (or a mix of both types) and shuffle the deck. Place a number of Fold-It tokens in the middle of the table to equal one fewer token than number of players. The game is now ready to begin!

Played over a series of rounds, players will be racing to complete the current Order Card the fastest. How? By folding their Recipe Cloth! Each Recipe Cloth is printed with a 4×4 grid of different dishes. The Order Cards each show a combination of 1-4 dishes. When an Order Card is revealed, all players will then try to fold and arrange their Recipe Cloth so that only the dishes from the Order Card are displayed. You can fold your cloth horizontally or vertically along the columns, and the cloth is double-sided to help accomplish your goal as well. Once you have folded your Recipe Cloth so that the dishes match the Order Card, grab one of the Fold-It tokens from the center of the table. When all the Fold-It tokens have been claimed, check each completed Recipe Cloth to verify that it is correct. If your Recipe Cloth matches, then you are in the clear! But if you made a mistake and had grabbed a Fold-It token, lose one of your Star tokens. *womp womp* The remaining player who was not able to grab a Fold-It token in the round discards one of their 3 Star tokens as well. The round is now over, and a new round begins by revealing the next Order Card. Play continues in this fashion until only one player remains with Star tokens. That player is declared the winner!

I have to admit that Fold-It surprised me, in a good way. I picked it up from a “Buy, Sell, Trade” Facebook group and really wasn’t expecting much from the gameplay. But when I actually got it to the table, I had a blast with it! The theme is cute, the gameplay is quirky, and it’s actually trickier than it looks. Some of the orders require you to fold the cloth in unique ways, and it can kind of be a brain burner. Add in the real-time racing element, and you’ve got an exciting game on your hands. Is it the most amazing and strategic game that I’ve ever played? No. But it’s pretty engaging for a light and fast filler game.

The components are pretty straight-forward. Cardboard tokens, nice sturdy cards, and actual cloth for the Recipe Cloth. The artwork is colorful and cute, and the tokens and cards will withstand many plays. I do especially like the Recipe Cloths too. The fact that they are actual cloth means that you won’t be worried about creasing issues from constant folding and unfolding between rounds and games. The cloths are double-sided as well to give you a boost for strategy as well. I will point out that all cloths are printed the exact same way, so it’s not like a Bingo board that varies between players. Everyone has the same tools with which to work each round, and everyone is on an even playing field that way. Nice components overall, in my opinion!

All in all, am I happy with my Fold-It purchase? Yes. It’s a quirky little filler game that is engaging and entertaining for all players. Yeah, there’s a player elimination element, but the game overall is so fast that the eliminated player(s) won’t be sitting around for long. Who knew that folding a piece of cloth could get your heart racing so fast? Fold-It is definitely a game that I’ll pull out when I need something quick and simple, or with which I can introduce people to the hobby. I guess if you play it too much, it would get kind of stale, but I don’t see that happening for me. Purple Phoenix Games gives this one a tasty 4 / 6.