Food Truck is a simple but challenging game in which you and your opponents all run competing food trucks. It employs a combination of luck and predicting what your opponents are likely to do, as you endeavor to serve meals nobody else is offering yet.
Players start by picking a Food Truck and taking the appropriate deck of five Truck cards. They also start with a deck of one Dessert and five Meal cards, though this number will increase as the game goes on. In the center of the table is a general supply of face-up cards equal to the number of players.
Each round, players will flip over the top card of their Truck deck, and arrange all their Meal and Dessert cards in whatever order they choose to form a draw pile. Then, they’ll take turns turning over the top Meal card of their deck. A few things can happen here: 1) it can be a unique item, that nobody else has played yet. This includes all Desserts, which are wild cards and match with nothing. In this case, it stays in front of them and play passes to the next player. 2) It matches one of their own cards, and adds to that pile. 3) It matches someone else’s card, and the player playing the duplicate is eliminated for the round, taking a card of their choice from the general supply and, if they’re the first person eliminated, the first-player marker. 4) Their top card would match someone else’s card, but they can play their Truck card to somehow circumvent that, whether by rearranging their own deck or affecting someone else’s cards. This is where the pile mechanic becomes important; for two of the five Truck cards, you can use your action if (and only if) the card you’re targeting isn’t part of a pile. Once you use your Truck card, you discard it.
The round ends when all but one player have been eliminated. They claim a victory point and the last card from the supply, any unused Truck cards are discarded (and reshuffled, if all five have now been used), and the general supply is restocked. Once someone has three victory points, they win! Otherwise, Meal decks are arranged and the next round begins.
The result of everyone gaining one new Meal card per turn is that planning your deck becomes progressively harder. Either you have more types of food to strategize with, or you have several of the same types of food, or both, and so does your opponent. Accounting for your Truck ability and whether you’re first-player or not is crucial! So Food Truck is easy to learn, hunger-inducing to look at, and a mental workout to play.
