Monster Crunch Review

Monster Crunch (Big G Creative)
Decades ago the General Mills corporation awoke the appetite of five monstrous ghoulies, each with their own penchant for sweet fruits or rich chocolate! Even to this day, their hunger knows no bounds and in Monster Crunch it is a milk-draining, spoon-wielding, trick-playing eating contest to prove once and for all who is the most ravenous Breakfast Boogeyman around!
A quick game to explain and to play, Monster Crunch is played in three hands with each hand lasting multiple rounds. To start a hand, players take their Monster Power Placards, Cereal Bowl, one Milk Token, and then draw 12 Cereal Cards (from a deck of 36, numbered 1-12). Starting with whoever most recently ate a bowl of cereal (and future rounds starting with the previous round’s winner), players take turns playing a single Cereal Card of the same or higher value into their Cereal Bowl. This continues until everyone but the last player in has passed, either by choice or compulsion, and drawn a Milk Token.
Milk Tokens provide a twist to the game in that players can spend any number of them on a turn to play an equal number of additional Cereal Cards to their Bowl, all of the same value or as part of a run (spending two Milk Tokens to play 3-3-3 or 2-3-4).

When the first player in a hand runs out of Cereal Cards completely, the round and hand are immediately over and other players discard any remaining cards to the box and draw 12 new Cereal Cards to start the next hand. At the end of the third hand, players count the number of Cereal Cards played into their Bowls and the highest amount wins!
Aside from Milk Tokens, the other twist for Monster Crunch comes from player’s two once-per-game Monster Powers that have their own unique rule bending/breaking  stipulations. Each monster’s powers are different and can be used to great effect… when played correctly!
Light-hearted but still with a nice amount of thinking on how best use Milk Tokens and Monster Powers, the theme and amazing artwork are undoubtedly the best parts of Monster Crunch. With just cardboard tokens and playing cards, there’s still a real eye for production value that makes Monster Crunch a game that looks like a whole lot of fun. In general, games that work with established IPs are always a little worrisome on whether it’s just a fandom cash grab, but there’s more in this box than just sugary Saturday morning memories. (Big G Creative) by David C. Obenour