Sushi Go! Spin Some for Dim Sum Game Review

Written by Rob Burman

Sushi Go! vs Spin Some for Dim Sum Game

It’s a situation plenty of us will have been in. You’re sitting in a restaurant with a spinning ‘lazy Susan’ in the middle. Everyone’s hungry. Fingers and chopsticks are poised to grab the tastiest treats. The food is delivered but DISASTER…the delicious-looking shrimp dumplings are on the other side of the table. You desperately try to spin the lazy Susan round to grab the dumplings but others are doing the same leaving you with the terrible turnip cake. The horror!

This is the premise of the latest in the Sushi Go! series, where you’ve got to ‘spin to win’. You and up to five other players are collecting sets of food to score the most points. Some, like the chive dumpling, require a set amount, whereas large sesame balls are worth a simple two points each.

So far, so Sushi Go! However, the big difference here is rather than picking and passing cards, you’re spinning a large plastic table with six food baskets. Each basket contains a card showing a dish, which you can grab to try and complete a set. The issue is that you can only nab the dish that’s in the basket in front of your plate… and that delicious-looking egg tart is three baskets away.

Related Article: Another in the Sushi family, our review of Sushi Roll

How does Spin Some for Dim Sum Play?

Thankfully, there’s help at hand in the form of chopstick tokens. These can be spent to rotate the table and for each basket you pass, you pop a token inside to ‘pay’ for the spin. At first you’ve only got four chopsticks at hand, so you’ve got to manage your supply carefully. Spending three tokens early doors to snap up a shumai dumpling could come back to bite you later on. It’s possible to collect more chopstick tokens by selecting a basket that contains tokens someone has previously spun past, which ensures there’s a tasty choice between banking chopsticks in case you need them later or shelling out to grab an essential dish. Talking of tasty choices, you can grab the steamed bun, which allows you to rotate the board without paying chopsticks. The bun is actually a physical squishy toy that’s mildly unnecessary as a game piece but is undeniably cute and is likely to have kids fighting over it - even after you stopped playing!

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In fact, chopstick and bun management is a crucial aspect of the game - and it’s something that we certainly overlooked on our first plays. Running out of tokens is a disaster because you can’t move the table and end up being forced to take a dish you don’t want. This is particularly galling when you have to select a ‘special plate’. These cards contain a mix of four dishes you must collect to score four points but if you can’t complete the card, you get nothing. Obviously this initially led to some frustration about ‘wasted turns’ but, to be honest, as long as you watch your chopsticks carefully, pointless turns are avoided and even those special plates can turn into high-scoring combos with some planning.

Talking of watching things, you can keep a close eye on what dishes your opponents are collecting because they’re clearly placed on their menu card. This allows for some canny play when you purposely spin the table to ensure a delicious morsel is out of reach or, even easier, snatch it before a rival. On the flip side, having things so clearly visible allows you to help younger players if they’ve missed the opportunity to bag a set.

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Should you play Spin Some for Dim Sum?

Yes.

You’ll struggle to find a better option for a family game night, particularly with younger kids. The cute visuals, squishy toy and spinning board are backed up by lightning fast play times and simple scoring mechanics.

Buy Sushi Go! Spin Some for Dim Sum on Amazon

TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED… GO NUTS FOR DONUTS

More cute visuals, set collecting and fast turn times with a foody theme.

Designer: Ken Gruhl and Quentin Weir

Publisher: Gamewright

Time: 20 minutes

Players: 2-6

Ages: 8+

Price: £28