If your group likes a gateway game with a daft premise and a bit of bite, The Big Squeeze is worth a look before its BackerKit campaign wraps up this week. It is a light engine-builder for 1 to 4 players in which you run a humble lemonade stand, then keep it running after the apocalypse rolls through town. Because when life gives you lemons, apparently, it also gives you the end of the world.
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Find events near youThe game comes from Wiggles 3D, the studio behind the frantic real-time co-op hit 5-Minute Dungeon, and it is designed by AC Atienza with art by Maximilian Gotthold and Cam Kendell. The clever bit is the double-sided board: one side is the cheerful town of Rinddale, the other its post-apocalyptic ruin, Rindfall. You spend the early game stashing ingredients and building recipe combos, then the dust clears and you re-emerge to squeeze every last drop of value out of the wasteland.
Each turn is quick. You move to a new space, take its action, and learn a new trick every time you make lemonade, so your little juice empire snowballs as the game goes on. Wiggles 3D pitch it as your "new go-to gateway game," a deliberate move to sit it alongside 5-Minute Dungeon on the shelf where non-gamers can pick it up in a couple of minutes. It plays 1 to 4, suits ages 10 and up, and runs about an hour.
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Start organising for freeThe campaign has already sailed past its goal and is into its final days, so if a cartoonish apocalypse engine-builder sounds like your kind of Tuesday night, now is the moment to jump in. Rally the group and find a game night near you to give it a spin once it lands.
Sources: Wiggles 3D | GeekDad | Board Game Quest | BackerKit
