Game Review: Mamma Mia

Rio Grande Games, $11.95

“Mamma Mia!” is a card game that falls into the “memory game” category. According to the box “Mamma Mia!” is “easy, fast, and fun”. Boxes don’t always tell the truth, do they? Well, in this case it does. “Mamma Mia!” is easy to play, moves along quickly, and is fun.

Now if you told me you wanted me to play a memory card game, I’d probably roll my eyes and defer to the kids. Not that there’s anything wrong with memory games, it’s just that they almost always seem to be a version of the game “Concentration” with different pictures and possibly a slight twist on the game play. Well, “Mamma Mia!” is nothing like that.

The goal of the game is to make the most pizzas. At the beginning of the game, each player chooses a special ingredient – olive, pepperoni, jalapeño, pineapple, or mushroom. Six ingredient cards are dealt to each player along with one menu card. On your turn, you may either play as many of a single ingredient as you like or you may play a menu card if you think there are enough unused ingredients in the stack to make that pizza. After you play, you draw from either the ingredient pile or from your menu cards pile to build your hand back up to seven cards. The round ends when a player runs out of cards, and then scoring takes place.

Scoring sounds a little confusing, but after playing a round or two it will make sense. You “take the pizzas out of the oven” by turning the play pile upside down (so the first card played is on top of the stack) and turn the cards over one by one, sorting them into columns by ingredient type. When a menu card comes up, the player who owns the menu card scores it if all the needed ingredients are on the table.

You are allowed to “finish” the pizza with ingredients from your hand. If you can’t complete the pizza, that menu card goes back to the bottom of your stack. After three rounds, the winner is the one with the most completed menu cards.

“Fast, easy, and fun” is indeed a good description of “Mamma Mia!” – and you get to work on your memory to boot! It’s a little confusing the first game because play and scoring are so different from other games, but once you get it, it’s fun. This is another family favorite in
our home.