Hibachi

Hibachi has everything you love from its real-life counterpart such as: items flying through across the room, extortionate prices being paid for the food and…. Poker!?

The aim of Hibachi is to throw your given poker chips across the board to land on ingredients which you can then use to make recipes. But the catch is that every poker chip has a price on it and that’s the price that you have to buy/sell your ingredients with. The game is 2-4 players and is a fun little party game that plays in about 30 mins.

Poker With Less Stakes, & More Steaks

This game lets you feel the experience of going all in at poker but without losing all your money which is amazing! The tension you feel when tossing your chips across the table praying for them to land in the ingredients area you need is what you’d feel waiting for a roulette wheel to stop spinning so you can finally see whether you luck had finally paid off.

Now that I’ve got all these analogies out of my head, what I’m actually talking about is the main gameplay of the game which is throwing the chips to land on specific areas marked with the ingredients that are used to make meals(these are what get you points). You use these as bets on how much you’re willing to pay for the ingredients, but they can get bumped off by another player or another player can land their chips in the same area and then it comes down to who bet more. This is a great majority of the game, and the game overall is very simple when it comes to rules which makes it easy to pick up and learn.

The betting is done via the back of the chips which show a price ranging from 100 to 600 and you try and hide this side from other players to hide your bets, which is where the tension comes in that I was mentioning earlier. I think this is a great aspect of the game as it goes from who can throw the best, to instead being about how good your poker face is and how much money you’re willing to put on the line, thus adding a nice level of strategy to the game.

Components

The components overall are well made and durable which is very much needed for a game like this one where you’ll be throwing it about a bit. The poker chips are actual poker chips and have a good weight to them. The money used in the game is a thicker material and is way harder to rip compared to actual paper currency and has a great feel to it making it easy to handle. The cards that accompany the game are also great in quality and the art is amazing and conveys all the information perfectly to the players. Now, the only let down to the games components is the board itself.

The board comes in two pieces in the box as its quite a big board and requires you to put it together via jigsaw-like sides that slot the sides together. This is where the issue comes in though as the board doesn’t stay flush together all the time whilst playing. The middle bends up a bit every now and then as it hasn’t got a jigsaw connection there and can cause the poker chips to be stopped by it. Most of the time this isn’t an issue, and even with this small issue I consider the game very fun and nice to play.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I’d really suggest Hibachi to anyone as it’s a nice easy game to learn and is very fast paced with turn times and overall gameplay. The box and components are nice with great artwork and the only downside is the game board being a bit bent at times during gameplay but that doesn’t take away or ruin the game in any way at all. The game does also get more fun if you’re able to land the perfect shots every time (I’m yet to gain that skill) but strategy does seem to beat that skill on most times so don’t worry if you’re not great with throwing, if you’re great with money management and being deceptive then you’ll love this game all the same.