Fromage is a worker placement board game where players assume the role of French cheesemakers, tasked with making, aging, and selling their cheeses. Players take their turns simultaneously, thanks to an innovative rotating game board. Each turn, players focus on the quadrant facing them, placing workers to craft aged cheeses and gather resources, all aiming to rack up the highest score by the end of the game.
Every quadrant offers distinct scoring opportunities and decisions in its minigame-style setup, keeping each turn fresh and engaging. With only a limited number of workers available, players must carefully balance the choice between going all-in on a single quadrant for big points or strategically placing workers across multiple areas to snag easy points.
What's in the Box
Fromage's box is on the larger side when it comes to board games, but it does manage to pack some pretty interesting components inside. The main gimmick of Fromage is its rotating Lazy Susan-style board that features four distinct quadrants for players to interact with. The game board does require some assembly with its interlocking parts, but it's not too difficult to configure. The four quadrants are linked together in no particular order with a resource tile placed in the middle of the board in any orientation, which creates a randomized game board each time you play.
Depending on the player count, there are double-sided inserts that are slotted into the bottom of each quadrant of the rotating game board, modifying the scoring and spaces available to suit the number of players.
Like most modern board games, there are punchboards containing the game's various tokens that you'll need to punch out and separate before playing. Thankfully, Fromage includes two wedge-shaped resource trays with labeled compartments for the groups of tokens, as well as plastic lids to make cleanup a breeze when you're done playing. The side of the game box even provides a visual aid for fitting all the components neatly back into the box, something that I wish more games did.
There are four double-sided player boards featuring rustic farm artwork on one side, and information about the solo mode on the opposite side. Each player receives a set of components that include 15 colored wooden cheese tokens, three workers, and three worker bases – in Hard, Soft, and Bleu cheese varieties.
While not used during the first game, there's an additional 32 structure tiles that can be drafted before each game and placed on each player's board that adds more strategy and variety for those looking for an even greater challenge.
Rules and How It Plays
Gameplay consists of placing workers on your quadrant of the rotating board each turn to score points and generate resources while strategically blocking your opponents from doing the same. The player with the most points at the end of the game is the winner.
After assembling the rotating game board with inserts corresponding to your player count, each player selects a random player board, and a matching set of cheese tokens, workers, and worker bases. All players start with two resources depending on which player board they have. Resources include structures, livestock, fruit, and orders to fulfill.
Each turn in Fromage is played simultaneously by all players, which not only keeps everyone engaged, but also allows the game to keep moving forward at a brisk pace. During your turn, you'll use your available workers to make one cheese and/or gather one resource in the quadrant facing you.
Every quadrant features a different venue, each with its own minigame-style objective and scoring opportunity. For example, the Fromagerie requires you to display your cheese on as many shelves as possible to score points and potentially gain bonus resources, while the Bistro has you pairing specific cheeses together for restaurantgoers in order to score. The Villes venue tasks you with distributing your cheese throughout the regions of France to expand your customer base and score points, while the Festival requires you to show off your cheeses by placing them near each other to score. Despite performing the same core actions, each quadrant feels distinct from one another and requires you to constantly adjust your strategy for each one.
Where you place your cheese token each turn is very important. Each of your three workers specializes in a different type of cheese: Hard, Soft, or Bleu. The spaces within each quadrant are represented by one of the three cheese types, as well as its required age, indicated by a gold, silver, or bronze color on the space. Cheeses that are aged longer are generally more valuable, but require you to leave your worker on that space for one to three turns while the cheese ages.
This risk/reward mechanic is what makes Fromage so delectable. Do you play it safe and get fewer points and resources, or double down on a specific quadrant and lose one of your valuable workers for a bit? You'll need to weigh these decisions carefully or you may find yourself twiddling your thumbs while everyone else takes their turn.
This is also where Fromage's rotating game board design really shines. When placing your worker on a space, it's oriented in a specific direction depending on the cheese's age. Gold aged cheese (the best) makes your worker face left, while silver faces upwards, and bronze to the right. Once all players have made their moves, the board is rotated clockwise 90-degrees to symbolize the cheese aging, and causing your workers to face a new direction in the process. At the start of each turn, players retrieve any of their workers facing them and continue making cheese until someone runs out of cheese tokens.
But, making and selling cheese isn't the only way to score points. The various resources you collect during Fromage are also key to your success. Collecting structure tokens allows you to build structures on your player board that grant you unique abilities, like gaining a resource when placing your cheese in a specific quadrant, or increasing your overall score if certain criteria is met. The default player board structures offer some interesting strategies, but once you get a feel for the game you can draft new structure tiles to replace the default options before you start. This allows you to create some interesting (and sometimes broken) strategies if you get the right tiles.
Order cards task you with making a specific type and age of cheese and grant you an escalating number of points depending on how many orders you complete during the game. This resource is particularly useful, since it often rewards you just for playing aged cheeses. My only complaint is that there's not really an incentive to complete the more valuable cheese orders unless it aligns with your strategy, as they aren't worth any extra points, despite potentially tying your worker up for multiple turns.
Certain spaces require you to make fruited cheese or jam, which can only be done if you have fruit on hand. Like the other resources, this can be totally ignored, but not collecting fruit effectively blocks you from being able to place your cheese on many of the spaces. This creates an interesting dilemma where you always want to try and have at least one fruit on hand to ensure you can make cheese during your turn, or you may fall behind the other players. At the end of the game, the number of fruited cheese and jams you made are multiplied together for bonus points.
The final resource, livestock, can be collected and exchanged for a specific type of aged cheese during your turn. This allows you to bypass the standard rules by making additional cheese on your turn, and potentially catching your opponents off guard by ending the game sooner.
While Fromage offers plenty of interesting decisions throughout the game between its four quadrants, I found that there wasn't as much player interaction as I would have liked from a worker placement game. You can almost entirely ignore your opponents and still come out on top as there are many different paths to victory. It's also somewhat difficult to determine who's ahead at any given moment with points coming from so many sources, so you're never really sure if you're actually getting in your opponent's way or just wasting your own resources.
As much as I love Fromage's rotating game board as a concept, in practice I had multiple situations where the quadrants separated while rotating it. Thankfully, a slightly updated design is in the works that includes a central locking axle to keep everything in place that will debut in 2026 alongside the standalone expansion, Formaggio.
Fromage also includes a solo mode, complete with an automa called the Corporation that's hell-bent on running your small cheese operation out of business. Instead of playing in different quadrants, the Corporation plays in your quadrant. At the start of each turn, the Corporation draws an order card and places a cheese token on the matching space, if possible. This creates an interesting dynamic as you can't effectively plan ahead since the Corporation can easily disrupt your strategy. The game ends when you or the Corporation runs out of cheese tokens, and the highest score wins. Overall, I found the solo mode to be a fun score-chasing opportunity and and its adjustable difficulty levels make it a rewarding challenge for players eager to test their cheese-making prowess solo.
