First Impression: Tosti!

By W. Eric Martin
December 1, 2008

Publisher: Splln
Designers: Rens & Martijn Althuizen
Players: 2-4
Ages: 4+
Playing Time: 10 minutes
Rules Language: Dutch, English, German, French and Spanish

Version played: Production copy
Times played: Twice, once with 3 and once with 2

Anyone who has overnighted in France knows the pleasure of a croque monsieur, the toasted ham-and-cheese sandwich that evokes far more pleasure than a plain ol’ American grilled cheese.

Less well known than the croque monsieur is the Dutch tosti, which is essentially the same thing as a croque monsieur – just moved north a few degrees on the globe – although it can be adorned with vegetables and other garnishings. When my wife and I lived in Utrecht in 1996, we became very familiar with the comfort-food value of the (inexpensive) tosti, lunching on them whenever we traveled around the country so that we could spend our guilders on better things.

Given the ubiquity of the sandwich within the Netherlands, having them featured in a game shouldn’t come as a surprise – what might be a surprise, though, is that Tosti! sprang from the mind of eight-year-old Rens Althuizen. While his father Martijn Althuizen used the Splln booth at Spiel 08 to show off two of his designs on elaborate touchscreen displays, young Rens hawked his game like a pro, pulling in young and old alike to play his creation.

Tosti! is a simple game, as can be expected for any game pegged for the four-year-old market. Players shuffle the deck of cards, which have images of bread, cheese, ham, tomatoes and onions printed on translucent plastic, then place it in the provided holder. On a turn, a player draws the front card and either starts a sandwich, adds the item to a sandwich (whether hers or another player’s), or places the card at the back of the stack. If she plays the card on another player’s stack, she can take up to two more turns. If she draws a blank card, of which there are four in the deck, then her turn ends immediately. The first player to create two or three sandwiches wins.

Luck plays a huge role in the game. Don’t draw bread, and you won’t start any tostis; draw onions and tomatoes before you finish the primary ham-and-cheese layer, and you’ll have to ship them elsewhere or pass. The translucency of the deck is interesting because you can generally see what the next couple of cards are, and that knowledge might affect your decision of whether to pass on an unplayable card or play it elsewhere in order to take more turns. Well, if you’re taller than this sign, that knowledge might affect those decisions; kids just blunder around depending on their inner nature, helping you make a sandwich in some cases and denying you the precious ham in others.

In the end, Tosti! is less like playing a game and more like spending time in the kitchen working together to put lunch on the table. I hand you the bread, you lay out the cheese, and a few minutes later we’re finished and putting the plates in the dishwasher. In interviews Martijn mentioned that this spirit of sharing as one of his reasons for publishing the game. While my five-year-old test player asked to play again, the eight-year-old ran away to do something else, perhaps finding the game’s division of labor to be too much like a chore to endure another round.

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