Chocolate Factory

21st November 2021

Sunday evening gaming Board Game Arena continued.

The next game of the night was Chocolate Factory.

Have you ever wanted to own your own chocolate factory? Since pretty much everyone's a fan of chocolate, why not?
Unfortunately, there's no eating chocolate in Chocolate Factory, only a resource-management and light programming game instead.

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Caveat: we've only ever played Chocolate Factory digitally.

What's in a game?

• Board: The game's central board has a couple of functions, it tracks rounds, coal values and scores, it also has spaces for the game's sets of cards. Speaking of which...
• Cards: Chocolate Factory uses quite a few different types of cards.
  Factory parts: It makes sense for a game called Chocolate Factory to have factory part cards! These smaller-than-usual cards will be used to manufacture chocolate and are part of the engine building mechanic. There are 2 types of card, A & B.
  Corner shop orders: These represent the wide variety of orders that players can fulfil. Corner shops come in 3 sizes, small, medium and large and respectively have 1-3 tiers of order to complete each. Once fulfilled, they can be replaced with new orders.
  Department store orders: There are 5 department stores in Chocolate Factory that always want the same type of chocolate. These double-sided cards are used to fulfil those orders and each had 9 spaces to track how much every player has provided. Unlike the corner shop orders, these are only scored at the end of the game and the points earned are relative to where players have reached on each card, there are scores for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place.
  Employees: There are 5 different types of employee card that directly correspond to the 5 different department stores that are demanding chocolate. Even though all the department stores want chocolate, players cannot sell it to a department unless they've acquired an employee of that respective store. Employee cards also confer a 1 round benefit to the player that acquired it.
• Player board: The player boards depict each player's factory; which consists of a conveyor belt that runs from left-to-right, the conveyor belt has an entrance and exit as well as 4 spaces; both above and below each conveyor belt space is a factory part space - thus 8 factory part spaces in all. The player boards come come with 3 factory parts already installed.
• Tiles: Chocolate Factory also comes with a fair amount of tiles for each player.
  Conveyor belt tiles: Each player will have 7 of these square tiles which will form their conveyor belt.
  Coal bunker tile: Each player has one of these tiles to store their coal.
  Storeroom tile: This is where each player their chocolate once it's exited their factory. They're not very good storerooms; because while players can store as much chocolate in their storerooms during a round, they can only store 2 pieces between rounds!
• Tokens: There's a lot of chocolate in Chocolate Factory and thus a lot of tokens! For the most part, players will be looking to use their factory to upgrade from one type of chocolate token to another to then fulfil orders. Essentially these are all resources that need to be managed in some way or other.
  Below is the 'order of value' for tokens.
  Bean tokens/Cocoa tokens:
  Chocolate finger tokens/Chocolate chunk tokens:
  Wrapped caramel chocolate/Wrapped nut chocolate tokens:
  Premium boxed chocolate tokens:
• Coal tokens: No, not chocolate but used to power factories.
• Markers: These come in player colours and are used to track various bits of information.

That's pretty much it for components.
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Since we've only played Chocolate Factory digitally, I can really comment on the qualty of the components.
However, I can say what are there is, is quite nice and colourful, it has an early 20th century vibe to both the art style and subject of the art.
The game uses a fair amount of iconography, luckily for the most part, it was pretty straightforward to comprehend.

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How's it play?
Setup

• ​Factory parts: Separate the cards into face-down decks by their A and B types. Shuffle each deck then place the A deck on top of the B deck. Thus the B cards will not appear until the late game.
• Corner shop orders: Sort these cards by their 3 types and shuffle them into 3 face-down decks.
• Employees: Sort these cards by their 5 types and then also shuffle them into 5 face-down decks.
• Department store orders: Put out these 5 cards next to the game board.
• Player boards: Give each player their factory board along with their conveyor belt, storage and coal bunker tiles.
• Starting player: Determine a starting player.

Now we're good to go!

On to play
​Chocolate Factory is played over 6 rounds - Monday to Saturday and each round has 2 phases, a drafting phase which goes twice in turn order and a factory phase which can be played out simultaneously.
Drafting phase

• Coal: First give each player coal tokens which will range from 5 to 10 according to the day.
• Factory parts: Draw factory part cards and arrange according to the number of players.
• Employees: Draw 1 employee from each of the 5 employee decks and arrange as per the number of players.
• 1st draft: Beginning with the first player, everyone will end up taking either a factory part card from the available selection or an employee card.
• 2nd draft: Once the 1st draft is over, there's a second! However, this draft is in reverse turn order, each player drafts another card, except this time it must be from the opposite selection. So each player will end up with a factory part and an employee.

That's it for the first phase.

Factory phase
Each player will now have a factory part and a employee card.
Factory parts are added to the player's board in one of the spaces above or below the conveyor belt spaces, a factory part can be used to replace an already existing factory part.
Employee cards serve 2 purposes, firstly they grant the player some sort of bonus and secondly, they allow the controlling player to sell chocolate to the department store they work for. Unlike factory parts, employees only stay in play for 1 round.

So how does the factory phase work?
The factory phase has 3 shifts and in each shift players first take a bean and place it on the conveyor belt tile that's about to enter into the factory.
Then each player must push their conveyor belt tiles along 1 space from the left to right so that the tile they placed a bean on goes into the factory, it's also possible that a tile will be slid out of the exit on the other side. Anything on that tile is placed into the respective player's storeroom.

Once this is done, the factory parts can be used, each part costs mostly 1 but sometimes 2 coal to activate. A factory part can only be used on resources adjacent to it. For example the basic roaster factory party will turn a bean into coca, a upgrader factory part will change any resource into the next level of resource (E.g., coca into chocolate fingers.). Converters will turn chocolate into wrapped chocolate or boxed chocolate and so on.
There are some limitation here, each factory part can only be activated once per shift.

Once the 1st shift is finished, the 2nd begins, another tile is placed at the entrance to the factory with  a bean on it and then the conveyor belt is pushed along another space and factory parts can be activated (Or reactivated.). Thus the conveyor belt will move 3 times a day.

Selling
When all 3 shifts have been run, players must sell chocolate, they can only keep 2 pieces in their storeroom between rounds, any excess is lost and players think ahead to avoid losses!
Chocolate can be sold to corner shops and each one has their own demands. Like the factory phase, selling can be completed simultaneously.
When selling to corner shops, they have 1-3 tiers of demand that must be met depending on their size and lower tiers must be completed before the higher ones. When a tier is completed it is immediately scored, when all tiers are scored the card is discarded and the player must draw a new corner shop card or any size they want.
Selling to department stores is a little different.
Firstly a player can only sell to a department store that matches the employee they drafted.
Secondly, when fulfilling the demands of a department store, points are not immediately scored, instead a marker in the player's colour is moved along the 9 spaces.

Once selling is concluded, a new round is set up, coal is distributed to players and new factory part and employee cards drawn, then the new round commences.

Endgame
Play continues until the 6th and round is completed, then the 5 department store scores are calculated.
Whoever has completed the most corner shop cards earns a bonus
Whoever has their marker the furthest along scores for 1st place, if the next player is at least half as far along as 1st place they score for 2nd place and if a 3rd player is half as far along as 2nd place, they score for 3rd place.
Furthermore, players can earn a bonus for selling chocolate to 3, 4 or all 5 department stores.
Finally, remaining chocolate and coal can earn points.
Points are tallied, highest score wins.

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Overall
Chocolate Factory gives players several important factors to think about.
Firstly, during the drafting phase, players must prioritise what they think is important to them, do they want a factory part more than an employee, they'll get both, but not necessarily in the ones they want if they wait to the 2nd drafting phase.

Cards that players draft can dramatically change the situation for players. Most obviously are employee cards which determine which department store a player can sell chocolate to. If a player is geared to sell the kind of chocolate a particular department is demanding, then getting the employee that gives you access can be paramount. This is even before considering which benefit the employee card also confers on the controlling player.

Factory parts will form the core of the player's ability to produce and sell chocolate, getting a part that wasn't wanted or needed will force player to reconsider their strategies for at least one round. Unlike employee cards, factory parts can stick around for the entire game, although they can be replaced and since players will acquire 6 factory parts and only have 5 spaces in their factory, it means something will have to go. Where these parts are placed can have a significant impact.
Place them too far to the right and it'll take a while for resources on the conveyor belt to reach them. Put them too far to the left and players risk screwing up their engine.
Putting factory parts in factory is an exercise in optimisation.

Speaking of optimisation, the game has a fairly unforgiving action economy. It's obviously a deliberate design decision, but there's never enough coal. Players start with 5 coal in round 1, they'll have 3 factory parts to activate - and that's over 3 shifts! Even in round 6, when each player can have a full factory, they only get 10 coal each, they'll on average only be able to activate 3 or 4 of their parts per shift.
If forces player to make meaningful decisions which is always good and also makes them think across 3 shifts instead of 1, but it also feels a little frustrating and uneventful when half of the engine you've been building isn't used in a shift and maybe isn't used in the entire round.

Scoring also presents players with choices.

Each round, every player will have the opportunity to score their 3 corner shops and work towards scoring 1 of the 5 department stores.
Corner shops are pretty straightforward to manage, the only wrinkle being that their demands must be met in tier order. It means that players will sometimes need to adapt to changing demands that a corner shop might present.
Department stores are a proposition that's a little more interesting though.
Because scores are based on relative positions between players, it can lead to some interesting outcomes.
E.g., if a player sells just 1 item to a department store and no one else does then they'll get the full reward for 1st place but conversely, if they sell 5 items to a department score and another player sells more, then they'll get less.
This adds an extra option or strategy to the game and unlike some tableau-engine building games, it becomes beneficial to watch what other players are doing and what they're producing and who they're selling it to.
And while I feel that the majority of player's victory points will come from corner shops, department stores can't be neglected. They exist in a sweet (sic) spot where they can tip the balance in a player's favour.

I'm kind of conflicted about Chocolate Factory, it has some solid mechanics that present players with choices, I particularly like how players can chose where to sell their chocolate to maximise their profit.
But parts of it are also a little unexciting, where the effort creating an engine feels greater than the rewards it provides.

I would have no problem playing Chocolate Factory again, but not too often. I think occasionally, it would be a good change of pace