WBG Score: 7/10
Player Count: 1
You’ll like this if you like: Light, solo, puzzles.
Published by: Button Shy
Designed by: Scott Almes
This is a free review copy. See our review policy here.
A Nice Cuppa is the seventh instalment in the Button Shy Simple Solo series. These games are designed for a single player, feature simple rules, and offer great replayability. It successfully crowdfunded in 2024 and is now available for pre-order on the Button Shy website. The game centres around the theme of relaxing over a cup of tea, whiling away the stresses of life, and focusing in a mindful way on the single action of making and enjoying a cup of tea whilst solving a delicate puzzle It's basically how I live 25% of my life, so I am fully invested. Let's get it to the table and see how it plays.
How To Set Up A Nice Cuppa
Shuffle the seven Tea cards and place them face up on their coloured focus side in a random order, in a line on the table. Now, shuffle the ten Worry cards and deal seven of them at random face down below each card. Discard the other three cards back into the sleeve, you wont be using them this game. You are now ready to play.
There are two mini expansions that you can easily add to the game at this stage. The Good Book expansion adds in two new Tea and three new Worry cards. Add these into each deck separately and play the game as usual, but this time lay out nine of each card instead of seven.
The Seasonal Stresses mini-expansion adds four new Stress cards. Pick one based on the season that you are currently in, or simply the one you want to use, and place it face up above the row of tea cards.
How To Play A Nice Cuppa
Flip one of the seven (or nine, if you are playing with the Good Book expansion) Worry cards. It can be any one. The game suggests you start with the card underneath the number one Tea card, though, in your early games. Then, from left to right, activate each Worry card. On your first turn, this will simply be the card you just flipped, but on later turns, you may have more than one Worry card to perform.
The cards allow you to move the Tea card order around, mostly in pairs, but also individually. However, all within specific parameters, such as swapping an odd-numbered card with an even one, or changing the position of one pair with one other single card in the row. You are looking to get the cards in sequential order, left to right, but by the end of the game. Not too soon!
When you have activated the Worry cards, you will now flip over every Tea card that is now above a face-up Worry card. This could flip it back to its focused side if previously you had flipped it already to its distracted side. Ideally, you want as many on the Focused side by the end of the game. Then remove any face-up Worry card that is now underneath a Tea card that is on its focused side. Then, finally, if you want to, you can swap any two adjacent Tea cards. This is the end of this round.
Move onto the next round by flipping over one more face-down Worry card to its face-up side. Then activate all face-up Worry cards just as above. Continue like this until there are no more face-up Worry cards at the end of a round. When this happens, play one final round, skipping the first step where you flip over face-down Worry cards, of course. Then score your final array of Tea cards based on the longest sequence of sequential cards you have starting from the number one onwards. You will score two points for any card in this sequence that is on the focused side and one point for any card in this sequence on the distracted side.
If you are using the Seasonal Stresses mini-expansion, be sure to take note of the specific requirement of your chosen additional stress. And then take the shown reward when you meet this requirement. If the stress card remains in play at the end of the game, it removes three points from your final score.
The Good Book expansion plays exactly the same as the base game, except you will play one extra round, and the final scoring is a little different, starting from the zero card instead of the one. Also, be sure to check the back of the score sheet to see how your final score stacks up.
Is It Fun? A Nice Cuppa Card Game Review
This game is obviously aiming for the "cosy" category. The art style. The theme. The wording. Everything about it screams "love me because I am relaxing!" And I am not 100% sure it succeeds there. Not because it is a bad game. Quite the contrary. More that as a solo puzzle, this is actually quite tense. Relatively speaking! The experience is still somewhat cosy, if that is what you are after. You are sitting alone. Doing minimal actions. Flipping the odd card here and there. And setup and game length are all perfect for a nice cup-of-tea break. Playing this in between day-to-day tasks, or whilst you are having a relaxing meditative moment to yourself is a perfect opportunity to take yourself away from your everyday stresses. For that purpose, I can see this game being seen as cosy.
But "cosy" is very much an overused word in the hobby right now. And what does it even mean? I interpret it to mean relaxing, solitary, and meditative. Not too taxing on your brain, but enough of a puzzle to take your mind off other things. And again, this game hits all those points with aplomb. As I mentioned above, there can be relatively tense moments as you come to the end of a game that you have done quite well in, and you only have one or two more turns left and you are trying to get the final few tea cards into the right position. If you get good and start winning a lot, this tension obviously will go. But for me, where my full point victories are currently coming in around 50% of the time, I want to get those final cards into position to claim a victory, and I know that fact is far from certain. It makes me a little tense. I am unsure if tense and cosy go together.
But that makes this game better, not worse. It is just a little far away from cosy. But in terms of mechanics and enjoyment, this tension that builds perfectly through your turns will make this light and quick experience feel worthwhile.
But I do not want to oversell this. This is a very simple and quick game that you will play through in minutes. The two expansions add a little more variety, but not too much. And you will have mostly the same experience each time. But that experience is a delicately and perfectly balanced puzzle that will test you just enough to make the game satisfying when you win, and still enjoyable when you don't score full marks. Because, of course, this is not a win-lose scenario. Getting all the numbers into sequential order will score you full marks, but the game gives you partial credit for still achieving some of the cards in order. It is up to you how that makes you feel when you do that. For me, in my first few games, I was obviously fine with it. It is actually quite a tricky puzzle to solve. But when you have played a few times and got them all in order a couple of times, you will want to do that every time. And that is not easy!
And I think this difficulty level is set to the perfect spot. It keeps you coming back for more as you want to win. Winning with full points feels achievable. But you know it won't happen every game. So when it does come good, it feels great.
I would recommend this game to anyone who likes the idea of having a small, portable, quick, and light game that they can carry around with them to play wherever and whenever, to give themselves a short break from existence, and absorb themselves into this intriguing little puzzle. If you are a fan of tea, this may appeal more. It can become quite abstract, I imagine, but I play mostly with a cup of tea alongside this, and really lean into the theme. It works for me both with the enjoyment of the game from the theme, but also to set my mind at ease and really reward myself with that five-minute break we all need once in a while.
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