Pina Coladice Board Game Review
Small little card and dice games are something I’m generally a pretty big fan of. I love a game with a bit of substance, but one that can also be played in 10-20 minutes. I’m always awarding some nice bonus points to games that look or feel amazing as well – it seems that Pina Coladice, a game I picked up at GenCon 2025 from Hachette USA, fits all of those requirements.
In Pina Coladice, players are rolling a group of five dice up to three times to attempt and satisfy combinations required by the central board. You might roll and attempt to score less than 9 in value, or get exactly 21/22/23 points from your dice, or create a full house or small/large straight. When completing a central requirement, players will take one of their screen printed drink tokens and place it on the card to earn points, generally between 1 and 4.
A game of Pina-Coladice ends in one of a few ways: either (1) someone places their last drink token, after which you play equal turns and then score points; or (2) someone reaches 20 points on their tracker, after which you play equal turns and then score points; or (3) a single player creates a line or column of 4 tiles with their player piece, at which point they INSTANTLY win.
Getting this out of the way early, let’s not forget that this is a dice game, so there is a fair amount of luck involved. Sure, you get to decide when to reroll or push for a different combination to earn more points to work on creating a line across the board, but ultimately it’s a game of luck. At 10-20 minutes of play-time total, I think the luck aspect becomes a pretty big non-issue as even if you feel like you were dealt a bad hand (figurative), it’s all over quickly.
If you hate games based on luck, then obviously this isn’t for you.
Pina Coladice is a bit of fun that’s over just as soon as it starts. We played a few games quickly in succession, and ultimately decided it could be a nice little filler game on board game night. With more players, the game does become a bit more competitive as more people are vying for specific spots, although there is a nifty setup change that attempts to keep the game as balanced as possible regardless of player counts.
I appreciate that the game is easy to setup, easy to teach, and easy to play. It means even when people are drained mentally, you can easily still play a few rounds of Pina Coladice. The game is also a cocktail/mocktail menu of sorts, which could be interesting if that is your thing. When you use the proper setup, you’ll get 4 ingredients to make a cocktail/mocktail if you get 4 in a row!
Overall, I’m pretty impressed with the production of this game, and while I’m not sure how long we will play this before it becomes a bit stale for our gaming group, the half dozen or so times we’ve played so far have all been pretty enjoyable.
Article By Adam Roffel
