Diced Veggies Review

Unlike many, I enjoy cooking. Putting raw ingredients together into tasty dishes isn't just satisfying, but also a great way to save money and improve my long-term health. But you don't have to be a proficient cook to enjoy a cooking game like Diced Veggies.

Now, I like chucking dice as much as the next guy, but I also like dice games that do something different. So, between the cooking theme and the spatial dice drafting mechanism, I was drawn to Diced Veggies. Plus, I'm always on the lookout for short yet satisfying games I can whip out on weeknights. This one checks all the boxes. But is it fun?

Here's everything you need to know about Diced Veggies, how it plays, what my experiences with it have been like, and whether it's the kind of game you'll enjoy enough to make it part of your own collection.

This review is based on my own personal copy of Diced Veggies, which I bought new from Amazon. Not a free review copy.

Overview

Diced Veggies is a dice drafting game, where you use the dice you draft to fulfill literal recipes. The dice come in five colors, each one representing a type of vegetable: Carrot (yellow), Mushroom (tan), Onion (pink), Pepper (green), and Tomato (red). With the right combination of ingredients, you can complete recipes that earn you points.

The unique angle of Diced Veggies is how you actually draft those dice. At the core of the game is a randomized 7x5 block of dice along with a Cleaver. The dice block is created at the start using the included frame: throw all the dice into the frame and shake it around until it's neat and ordered, then remove the frame. Using the Cleaver, you cut into the dice block and "push out" a chunk of dice, which then become yours.

What's to keep you from taking out a massive chunk of the block and hoarding all the dice? Well, here's the catch: when you cut out a chunk of the block, the sum of the dice in that chunk can't exceed 10. That means you have to use a bit of spatial reasoning to find groups of dice that have the ingredients you need while summing up low enough that you can grab them all with one fell cut.

Interestingly, the dice in Diced Veggies are slightly modified: instead of values 1-2-3-4-5-6, you have values 2-2-3-4-5-6. In other words, no 1s and two 2s. You can think of the die values as representing the quality of a particular ingredient, so a 6 Tomato is of higher quality than a 3 Tomato. This will matter when it comes time to cook recipes, as higher-value dice can help you spruce up your dishes and earn more points.

Along with the dice, Diced Veggies also has 44 unique Recipe cards, with each Recipe comprising some combination of ingredients as well as a point value. If you can cut and collect the right dice from the block, you can use those to cook a Recipe card and earn its points. You have your own hand of Recipe cards that you're working on, and you can draw more Recipe cards from a central card market during the game.

There are also 34 unique Hype cards, which earn you bonus points if you can fulfill special requirements when completing a Recipe. (Only one Hype card can be used per Recipe.) For example, Hype cards may require that all dice used for a Recipe add up to exactly 19, or all dice values must be different, or you have to spend an extra Pepper when cooking. You have your own Hype cards that you can apply to the Recipes you're working on.

Between the dice drafting, Recipes, and Hype cards, you know everything you need to know to play Diced Veggies. Played turn by turn, here are the actions you can do on your turn:

• First, cut dice from the block. Use the Cleaver to cut into the dice block and draft a group of ingredients for yourself. These are yours to keep and don't have to be spent right away.
• Then, cook Recipe cards. If you have the required ingredients, you can spend them to complete one or more Recipes. For each Recipe you complete, you can optionally add a Hype card to it as long as you fulfill the conditions of that Hype card.
• Then, draw another card. Either a Recipe card from the central card market or a Hype card from the Hype deck. If you don't like any of the Recipe cards in the market, you can test your luck by drawing from the Recipe deck, sight unseen.
• Then, discard down to the limit. If you have more than 8 ingredient dice, discard down to the limit (your choice of which dice to discard). Same goes for Recipes (limit of 2) and Hype cards (limit of 2).

Keep playing until someone cooks their sixth Recipe, which triggers the end of game. Everyone else gets one final turn. Then, everyone gets one more opportunity to only cook Recipes. Tally up all points from Recipes and Hype cards. Whoever has the most points wins!

Oh, there are two more small rules in Diced Veggies:

• Before you cook, you can spend your Chef token to alter one ingredient die. You can change either the value or the type to whatever you want.
• At the start of your turn, if the dice block is missing one or more types of ingredients, you can restock it by throwing the block dice and all spent dice back into the frame and recreating the block. When restocking, everyone gets their Chef token back.

Setup and Table Footprint

Diced Veggies is quick to get started. Shuffle the Recipe deck, deal two per player, then reveal three for the card market. Shuffle the Hype deck and deal one per player. Give each player a Chef token. Randomize the dice block using the frame and give the Cleaver to the start player. Ready in 3 minutes.

As for table footprint, Diced Veggies doesn't need that much room. The dice block is compact, the card market isn't that large, and each player's collection of cards and dice isn't that large either. You can easily play a full four-player game of this on a standard 3-foot-by-3-foot card table.

Learning Curve

Diced Veggies is simple enough to be a kids game. The dice block cutting mechanism is intuitive. The recipe fulfillment is straightforward. The points are clearly explained. There might be one or two edge rules that can trip someone up—like when to refill the dice block or how many max dice and cards you can have at the end of your turn—but anyone can play this.

And if you want to play with truly young kids, there are some minor modifications in the rulebook that simplify things even further. These include not playing with Hype cards or Chef tokens, reducing the number of completed recipe cards to trigger the end of game, and changing the dice draft from "any group of dice with a sum of 10 or less" to "any group of up to three dice." It doesn't get simpler than that.

Game Experience

Decision Space

Diced Veggies is extremely straightforward. In fact, you really only have one decision to make in this game: which grouping of dice am I going to cut from the block? Beyond this, nothing else quite matters.

Mind you, I'm not saying it's obvious which cluster to cut out. To make that decision, you need to look at your Recipes and your Hype cards, to see which ingredient types and which number values you need to complete your Recipes and (ideally) get them Hyped up.

In other words, while your Recipes and Hype cards dictate your path to victory, your goal is to collect the right ingredients as efficiently as you can to fulfill those cards as quickly as possible. That means analyzing the block and figuring out the best combination of dice you can possibly get on every given turn. It's very much a logical spatial exercise—one that could result in a lockup of analysis paralysis, but usually doesn't.

There are a few other decisions you can make in Diced Veggies, but they're all relatively minor. For example, when to use the Chef token to change one die's type or value. Or which Recipe to draft from the central card market. Or which cards to keep when you're forced to discard down. Whether you should even care about your Hype cards or simply rush big-point Recipes to hopefully outpace your opponents.

If anything, I'd say smart drafting of Recipes is the most important skill after the drafting of dice. This ultimately makes Diced Veggies a drafting game—one that's exceedingly simple, straightforward, and a bit toothless.

Luck Factor

My biggest problem with Diced Veggies is the heavy luck factor. Your initial Recipes and Hype card are randomly dealt, and the layout and values of the dice in the block are entirely randomized. Trying to make all of that work together can be a fun exercise, yet at the same time you can't help but feel that your chance at success was almost predetermined.

If the core decision in Diced Veggies is figuring out which grouping of dice to cut out, then it follows that your decision is limited to what the dice block offers you—and while on the surface it might seem like the potential cuts you can make are vast, the "sum of 10 or less" rule is actually quite constraining. It's a struggle to make good cuts, and it's mainly due to luck.

Yes, the Chef token is meant to help you mitigate that. But you only get to use it once per restock, and with lower player counts you might only see two or three restocks in a game. That isn't enough to work around the block's constant randomness. Same goes for drawing and discarding Recipes, which theoretically lets you cycle through your options if you're stuck with dice that don't match your Recipes in progress, but in practice the cycling is too slow and infrequent to have any meaningful strategic value.

And don't get me started on the Hype cards, which are interesting on paper (and thematically fun) but also very lucky. Some are just plain better because they're easier and more reliable to complete. Sure, they might offer greater or fewer points to compensate for difficulty... but again, the randomness of the dice block makes it substantially harder to get the exact dice needed for the more difficult Hype cards, and the extra points aren't worth chasing.

Fun Factor

I like contract fulfillment as a mechanism, so I find Diced Veggies pleasantly enjoyable despite its flaws. Luck certainly has sway over your potential to win, but to me this game isn't about winning or losing. Finding the right grouping of dice to cut and trying to meet my Hype conditions while cooking my Recipes? I like it. It's satisfying to see what I've accomplished.

That said, Diced Veggies is very much a low-key game. There isn't much excitement or tension, except near the end when you feel like you won't be able to complete all your dishes because someone else is about to end it. It's a quiet and somewhat puzzly game. You're working on your own stuff and not too bothered by anyone else. Very little table talk, too.

If you're looking for something more than this, check out my unofficial variant below which changes things up a tad.

Pacing

Diced Veggies flows pretty well without much downtime between turns. Most of your time is spent analyzing the dice block and deciding on your cut. Not much else to do after that, except when you're over the limits and need to discard down, which might need a minute to think about.

As for the game arc? It's flat overall. Every turn feels almost exactly the same, save for the occasional moment of satisfaction when you get to cook a Recipe, as well as towards the end when you're struggling to complete your final dishes while someone else seems ready to trigger the game end.

The flat game arc isn't necessarily a bad thing, though. It's what makes Diced Veggies so pleasantly meditative. But again, if you want something more tense, do check out my unofficial variant down below.

Player Interaction

There's basically zero player interaction in Diced Veggies. It's a multiplayer solitaire experience where you're handling your own dishes and trying to do the best with what you have. No one can mess you up or get in your way.

That said, it does have some indirect interaction due to the dice and Recipe drafting mechanisms. Someone might take the ingredients you need or the Recipe card you were eyeing, throwing you for a loop. But I've never seen hate-drafting in Diced Veggies, as it's always better to get what you need than to screw others over. You end up hurting yourself more.

Player Counts

In games with a central drafting mechanism, you tend to lose control with more players. Too much changes between your turns, so it's harder to plan ahead and stick to a particular strategy. In the case of Diced Veggies, more ingredients are taken from the block between your turns, making it harder to complete your Recipes and Hype conditions. Same for the Recipe market, with more chances for someone to take one that you want.

Apart from that, the gameplay is the same. Turns are snappy and play time scales well with each additional player. I think Diced Veggies plays best at two, but I'm happy to play at any count because I don't care about winning in this game. I just like the process of cutting and cooking, win or lose.

Fiddliness

I love the idea of using a Cleaver to cut from the dice block. Sadly, the Cleaver is kind of thick—it's cardboard, after all—so you need some manual dexterity to get it in between dice at times. You also need to be careful that dice aren't accidentally knocked over, which can be a risk. But is Diced Veggies a fiddly game? No. Pay a modicum of attention and it should be fine.

Replayability

While Diced Veggies is far from an amazing game, I like it because it's cozy. I don't want to play it all the time, and I never find myself thinking "Man, I wish I could play some Diced Veggies right now."

But when it hits the table on occasion, I'm reminded why I like it. The Cleaver is tactile and puzzly. It's not a mentally demanding game. It's satisfying to complete Recipes, and the artwork is nice to look at. It's an inoffensive way to pass the time, especially when played with kids. It comes out every once in a while and that's good enough for me.

If you're looking for strategic depth or extensive variability, you won't find it here. Diced Veggies has 44 Recipe cards and 34 Hype cards, so you're going to see all of it sooner than later. The novelty factor of the Cleaver and dice block also fades quickly. You probably won't be playing this one over and over and over again every night. (That said, my unofficial variant down below does kick it up a notch, making it more replayable.)

Order Up! Variant

My unofficial variant for Diced Veggies keeps all the same rules, save for the following minor changes:

• Create a random Recipe deck of 6 cards per player. For example, in a three-player game, the Recipe deck is 18 cards randomly chosen.
• Instead of players possessing up to two personal Recipes to work on, there's only a shared central market of Recipes. The central market is 4 Recipes. When you cook, your options are the ones in the central Recipe market. When a Recipe is cooked, a replacement is immediately drawn.
• Each player starts with 3 Hype cards. When a Hype card is used while cooking, a replacement is immediately drawn to hand. At the end of your turn, you can discard one Hype card for a replacement.
• When cutting the block, you can cut a grouping of up to three dice. The pips on the dice don't matter (i.e., not limited to 10 pips).
• At the start of your turn, if you have at least one die, you can discard all of your dice to restock the block.
• The game ends when the final Recipe is cooked.

Why is this variant more fun for me? Whereas the official gameplay feels soft, individual, and lucky, these changes ramp up the tension, create more competition, and give you a little more control:

• Cutting three straight dice is faster and more interesting than staying within a sum of 10 pips. (No more counting!) You get more dice per turn on average, giving you more paths to Recipes and speeding up the pace. It's also more fair, with players gaining the same number of dice every turn (for the most part). It's less vulnerable to the luck of the pips.
• Cooking from a shared Recipe market creates competition, and the 4-card market offers more room for strategy and adaptation than the 2-card personal hand in the official rules. With everyone vying over the same set of Recipes, there's a race element—and this creates tension. Are you going to save up for the big-score Recipes at the risk of someone else taking them? Or will you snag the lower-value ones with fewer ingredients? Similarly, are you going to risk waiting an extra turn so you can Hype it up? Or just cook it now without a Hype card? This bit of push-your-luck is tense.
• Forcing a restock by throwing away your saved dice gives you more control. You're never stuck with ingredients from previous cuts, nor are you ever stuck with a bad block that offers you nothing good. You always have the option to start over. It's more flexible and more strategic.
• Ending the game with the depletion of the Recipe deck (rather than someone reaching 6 cooked Recipes) paves the way for another strategy, which is to cook without Hype cards. Normally, any Recipe cooked without a Hype card is wasted potential. Now, however, cooking a Recipe without a Hype card lets you swoop in and collect those points while denying others the opportunity to cook that Recipe with a Hype card. Is it better to rush a lot of un-Hyped Recipes or cook fewer Hyped Recipes?

Solo Mode

Diced Veggies has an official solo mode that's basically the same game, except with more upkeep and more puzzliness to it.

At the end of your turn, there's an extra Trimming step where you roll a set of dice (one of each ingredient color) one by one and use the results to remove dice from the block. If more than one die is eligible to be trimmed at any given time, you get to choose which die to remove. This adds to the puzzly gameplay as you get to shape the block every turn and prep it for your next cut.

Also, the solo game doesn't end when you cook your sixth Recipe but rather when the dice block is restocked for the third time. In other words, instead of optimizing your score across six Recipes, you have a finite number of turns to maximize your score as best as you can.

Overall, it's not bad if you like that it's way more puzzly than the usual game. Whereas the base gameplay feels cozy and quick, the solo gameplay requires more thinking, more planning ahead, more analysis of the dice block and figuring out how to extract the exact dice you need. It feels like a different game, honestly, and not one that I personally enjoy.

Production Quality

The production of Diced Veggies won't blow you away, but it's pretty darn good, especially coming from a boutique publisher.

The dice are decent, but I wish the colors were better and the edges more rounded. The Carrot (yellow) and Mushroom (tan) are a bit too similar and I've accidentally gotten them mixed up in games. Meanwhile, the Cleaver doesn't neatly slip in between two dice that are butted up against each other, which can be frustrating sometimes. One solution would be for the dice edges to be more rounded. Another would be for the Cleaver to have a tapered edge that can cleanly separate dice. Minor, but worth mentioning.

The cards are aesthetically pleasing, but I wish they were linen-finished. I love the graphic design of these cards. They're easy to read and intuitive to understand, and it all lends to the game's overall cozy aesthetic. They feel robust, too, which is great for durability. But they aren't linen-finished, so they're glossy and vulnerable to moisture, grime, and stickiness.

The cardboard frame, Cleaver, and Chef tokens are great. The frame is easy to put together, and it's a clever way to manage the dice block. The Clever is a fun touch that's also practical. And the Chef tokens look great. No complaints about any of these components.

There's no box insert, but the box size is just right. I'm usually a stickler for good box inserts, but don't actually think Diced Veggies needs one. Everything fits back in the box snugly—you don't even have to disassemble the frame—and the box is sized perfectly for minimal wasted space. I can appreciate that.

The Bottom Line

Diced Veggies is a pleasant if toothless experience. The unique method of drafting—using a Cleaver to cut from a block—is both novel and tactile, but the contract fulfillment gameplay is otherwise generic.

Overall, it's a nice change of pace for times when I want to shut my brain off and just have a chill, cozy time. When I want a little more bite, I play using my unofficial variant, explained up above.

Buy it from:
Amazon • Miniature Market • Noble Knight Games

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