Secret Recipes

A fun game that has been left unnoticed. Its theme appeals to a lot of gamers.

Really cute and fun game to play with my son. We spend a lot of time in the kitchen cooking together, so I knew we'd really enjoy a recipe game such as this one. The pieces are great quality and packaged securely. My son is 11 and autistic, and he understands the instructions well. It's a game we play 1 round of, because it does take a while to finish. Always a good time though!

Secret Recipes is a lively and strategic card game where players compete to become the ultimate master baker by collecting ingredients and completing recipes. More then just a modified version of go-fish the game challenges players to gather the right ingredients while using their character's special abilities to gain an edge. The twist! Once a recipe is revealed, it becomes vulnerable to other players who can steal it by completing it.
Best with 4-5 players, three is okay but don't bother with two. Games take about 20 minutes with adults, 30 minutes with kids.
Lots of playability due to the randomized recipes or character abilities. I'd love to see some expansion content increasing difficulty and/or adding more abilities and recipes.

I received a cooking themed board game. The game is called secret recipes and is for 2-5 platers . The recommended age is 9 and older but 7-8 year olds might catch on to the game too. It’s a good clean fun family board game. You get a small board that holds the remaining deck of cards after dealing.

There are 95 ingredients cards, 25 recipe cards, 8 character cards, 3 character ability trackers, 1 wild Willy wild card, 60 check mark tokens, 5 cheat sheet cards, 1 pantry board, and a rule book. The game is played by basically using a recipe card and gain access to the ingredients. It goes from player to player .

After playing a trial game we found everyone caught on quickly . You can play a short version timed or a long version until you run out of cards. The pieces are well made and the cards are a good thickness . Fun for the whole family

Played with a group of four, all in our early to mid-thirties.

First Impressions:
The components of this game are excellent. The cards are thick and durable, and the other pieces met or exceeded my expectations in quality.

Complexity:
I’d rate the complexity around 1.5–2/5. It’s not overly challenging, but you do need to spend some time reviewing the rules before diving in.

Gameplay Experience:
Unfortunately, the game mechanics and rules could use improvement. Playing with four players felt overly long and drawn out, especially since we followed the recommendation to skip the characters and their abilities for our first playthrough.

The first phase of a player’s turn—asking for ingredients—slows the game considerably. When players ask for broad categories of ingredients (e.g., color or type), this process can drag on before they're forced to search the pantry. This often results in players holding large numbers of cards, which then take additional time to sort and manage. The card design doesn’t help either, as it’s not easy to quickly identify what you have. Improved quick-reference icons in the corners would be helpful.

Another issue is the back-and-forth stealing that can occur when asking for ingredients. It feels repetitive and can create frustration rather than fun. Additionally, I found it disappointing that the recipes don’t have names—it’s a small detail, but it could add to the game's charm.

Pacing and Rules:
Overall, the game’s pace felt slow and monotonous. While the characters and their abilities might add some variety, after reviewing them, I’m doubtful they would make a significant difference to the overall experience.

The rules also lack clarity. Too often, we had to pause and decide as a group how to interpret them, which detracted from the flow of play.

Conclusion:
While the components are excellent, the gameplay needs refinement to appeal to a wider audience. With adjustments to pacing, card design, and clearer rules, this game has potential, but as it stands, it’s not one I'm excited to revisit.

This is a high-quality board game with a lot of cards, a board, and some token checkmark coins to play with. I want to be more hands-off and let my kids figure it out, but they could not grasp how to play this game following the instructions. Age 9 and up could play but I think at the younger spectrum they could have a hard time getting the rules. I think a video instruction QR code may help. Individual experience may vary by for my case an adult need to be involved.

Fun card game for the family. My family loves to play, and it’s become a go to for game night. The characters are super fun, and the whole concept of racing to complete cake and cupcake recipes adds a delicious twist. It keeps everyone on their toes and makes each game different. It’s easy to learn, and the 30-45 minute playtime is just the right length for keeping it exciting without dragging on too long.

The creative minds at ThinkPsych having come up with a terrific game. I know my grandsons, who aspire to open a bakery when they are older will love it. The game, for ages nine and older shares many elements with Go Fish, but at an elevated baking theme level. Players work throughout the game to collect the ingredients they need to bake cakes and cupcakes. While the cards for those items can be collected by being picked or “fished” for, theft is also a possibility.

The components of the game are well made and durable. The instructions are straightforward and there are options for playing at different levels of difficulty that allow players to build on their growing expertise. If it seems confusing at first, there are two videos produced by ThinkPsych that can be very helpful. The first is a short one on the product page. The second, and longer one is on YouTube.

I can’t wait to play this with my grandkids, but this would also make a great gift for families that enjoy playing games together, especially if you include some cupcakes with the gift!

This game is (as they say) a cross between ‘Go fish’ and ‘Great British Baking Show’. There is a quick video to watch if the instructions aren’t quite clear enough. The set up is pretty easy. When you are just learning to play, you can leave out the character cards. The goal is to collect ingredients to complete cake and cupcake recipes for points.

Our family are big game lovers — so much so that our adult kids get together with game-playing groups for game nights. We have many games, so we might be more choosy/opinionated than some other reviewers, but honestly I have almost no constructive criticism at all.

This is a super fun game that has us excited to play again! The game itself is high quality — cards are plastic laminated (durable) and the board is solid. We watched the included QR code to get the gist of the game, and chose to play the simplified game (minus the characters and special powers) but we are excited to play again and add an additional element and strategy opportunity with those.

There are also longer-game variations, and ways to play for non-reading kids using color descriptions instead of printed phrases. This game is kind of a mix of many card games with some fun twists (think Cover Your Assets mixed with Go Fish, Sushi Go, and several others) and a baking-based theme (cake and cupcakes “recipes”). If I were to give any constructive feedback, it would be that it's a bit tricky to keep track of the ingredients unless holding as demonstrated above (which gets complicated when you can hold up to 10 ingredient cards).

It would have been nice to have the words vertically on the sides or along the top, but that is not a huge deal. We played additional rounds a few hours after our first round and enjoyed it as much as the earlier round. Looking forward to playing again soon!

My kids LOVE this game and we parents enjoy it, too. There aren't many games we can all enjoy.

I would compare this game to "Go Fish" with a twist. You collect ingredients for a recipe in the same manner as Go Fish. I used it in my classroom and my students had fun with it.

Good quality and fun family game.

Not my favorite game but its not horrible.

Great game! Fun for the whole family. Children need to be good readers to play.

So much fun!

Wonderful strategy game with a nice aesthetic and bright colors

Its a wonderful game we bought on a whim. My 10yr GD loves it & shes happy so am I

The game is cute- think go fish but with baking ingredients and the goal is to make a recipe…. The directions are hard…. I’m not sure who thought that the directions were appropriate for that age range, but I used it in my high school class and had to dumb down the directions to make it where they would understand it.

This is a fun game! Our family really enjoys playing it. It was easy to learn and there are videos online to help explain the directions.

We love this game. It’s a great mix between go fish and rummy.