restaurant_rowRestaurant Row is a board game by Greg Lam from Pair-of-Dice Games, a venture attempting to both design, publish, and distribute games all at once.

I’ve had the pleasure of playing one of their previous games, Knockabout, which was quite good, and I hear that Restaurant Row is also quite good. So no complaints in the game play department.

As to components … Restaurant Row is their most complex game, yet, and it comes in what appears to be a corrugated cardboard box. The game “board” is sheets of paper put into a plastic restaurant menu cover. Add to that some dice and poker chips, and it’s hard to see how the game could reasonably be worth the $35 they’re asking for it.

I’ve made game prototypes, so I know that the quality you get for making only a few games is not as good, and more expensive, but you don’t then sell prototypes as finished items. You send them to publishers and get them to publish professional looking games.

I admit that the restaurant menu idea is cute for a restaurant themed game, and you can easily write and erase on it, as is needed during the game. I look forward to playing it, hopefully in a nicer version.