We’re in the middle of a war in our garden. It’s all based around the strawberries we have foolishly attempted to grow. Those strawberries are not making it into our bowls. Someone is getting to them first. We were almost convinced it was our regular visitor, Howard the Hedgehog. There isn’t much that Howard won’t scoff. Put a net over ‘em, you say? Yeah, we did that. Then, one super early morning (deeply unusual for me) I happened to squint out of the kitchen window, and what did I spy? Why, a particularly nimble squirrel, scoffing our strawberries. The little son of a nutcracker had torn and chewed a squirrel-sized hole in the netting, and was sharing his rewards with some happy starlings. I think I’ve had two of those strawberries. Two. Not exactly a festival. Not even enough for breakfast.
So let’s head to Nemi where we can enjoy a strawberry festival! (Scout’s honor, every word of that odd little tale is true.)
In Nemi: The Strawberry Festival, players immerse themselves in the charm of an Italian summer by drafting wild strawberries, baking mouthwatering desserts, and decorating the town with vibrant garlands. Designed by Valeria Cavasin and Edoardo Eibenstein, this 2–4 player game plays over 4 rounds, featuring a mix of open drafting and blind auctions. This is also part of The Cozy bundle, a collection of three games coming to Kickstarter in September 2026. It’s a collection that could be timed perfectly, if the recent Rise Of Cozy Gaming is anything to go by.
Some of our board game brethren have a certain equation in their heads. Cozy = light gameplay, light = basic, simple strategy, right? The Cozy Bundle is here to prove you wrong.
Confession time: I fell for the above equation. I expected this to be a fairly light, throwaway affair that would perhaps be best suited for younger families or as a gentle opener for a cozy-themed games night. And yes, I know a reviewer should approach new games with an open mind, but preconceptions are human. Did I get what I expected? You’ve probably guessed that I didn’t.
How To Play
First off, select the themed snacks of your choosing. Then place the main town board in the center of the table—the recipes in the middle of the board double up as handy snack suggestions in case you get stuck. Supplier Cards are shuffled, and all players start with two in hand.
A communal draft pool is formed underneath the board, combining face-up Harvest Cards and a selection of available Supplier Cards.
Then we go straight into Phase 2, the Harvest. No, that’s not a typo. The first round of Nemi misses out Phases 1 and 4, and it’s in this shortened introductory phase that you’re going to amass a lot of ingredients. During setup for this phase, one card from the Harvest deck is dealt face-up in the four available spaces beneath the Town board, and cards from the Supplier deck are dealt immediately below them. One Supplier Card goes under Harvest Cards 1 and 2, two Supplier Cards under Harvest Card 3, and three Supplier Cards under Harvest Card 4 (you might be getting a hint of where the core of the strategy lies here). Players take turns selecting which of the four spaces they will harvest. When you claim a space, you gain all the ingredients and cards currently resting there. The choices are not equal. Some options feature more resources than others. If, in the final turn of this phase, you choose a resource-heavy space to boost your inventory, the game balances this advantage by guaranteeing that you will make the final choice (pick last) in the subsequent round (more on this in a moment).
Paint the Town… Strawberry
Then it’s off to Phase 3, Decoration. Everyone’s hands will be filled with cards at this point, when the focus shifts to a blind bidding war to decorate the town square. Every player secretly selects a hidden number of cards from their hand to commit to the festival’s decorations. All players then reveal their chosen cards simultaneously. The player who wagers the highest value or most cards wins the phase for that round, earning additional victory points. This round can cost you valuable resources. All cards committed to the decoration phase by every player are thrown into the discard pile. You must decide what you are willing to sacrifice from your hand just to chase the round’s decoration bonus.
At the end of the first round (after skipping Phase 4) you will start Round 2 at Phase 1. Players must return all of their collected Harvest cards to the main pool, except for the last Harvest card drawn in the previous round. You must also turn your cutting board 90 degrees to the right. Any unused fruit tokens must be discarded. Then Phase 2 as before. Then Phase 3.
Cooking Up A Storm
Phase 4 is where the Cooking happens. Players spend the fruit tokens and resources they successfully preserved through the previous phases to fulfill dessert recipes. The system rewards specializing in specific treats. While cooking unique recipes grants standard points, completing identical dishes activates a multiplier system. Every time you repeat a recipe you have already created in a previous turn, the point multiplier for that specific dish increases, causing your score to skyrocket if you corner the market on a specific dessert type. This is where you need to be smart about how you use the ingredients you have each round. Do you chase the higher point recipes that are more complex, or do you make lots of easier recipes with a lower points reward where you can increase the multiplier faster?
Once the final round is over, tot up the points and decide which one of your family members to ban from ever playing this game again.
How Well Does It Play?
For your first play, Nemi will fool you. Most games only allow you to collect a few meagre resources in the first round. Here, you’ll land an abundant harvest – so many fruity tokens that they’ll barely fit on the left side of your personal chopping board. You’ll think this is silly, everyone will be able to make everything, where’s the fun or challenge? But you need to think hard about which Harvest Card to pick: one might give loads of berries and a single ingredient card, while another gives three ingredient cards but berry tokens you don’t want. Balance is critical, and beware: your board turns each phase, and once your berries are on the right side, you’d best use em or lose em. This threat of wastage adds an extra element of tension to Nemi and elevates the gameplay – how well can you plan your moves?
The mechanics are super easy to grasp, once you get past one or two obfuscated elements of the rulebook, such as whether or not you take all the Supplier Cards underneath a Harvest Card or choose one. (You take all) This isn’t endlessly complex, but what is here has been play tested to the limit and fine-tuned to exactitude. It’s a quick game to set up, helped along by a decent storage solution in the box. All the tokens have their own little themed crates to sit in, and it’s made abundantly clear which cards to use in each round of the game: in a neat little design choice, the Supplier Cards have strawberries on the back with more bites out of them depending on which round they’re used in.
The Finest Harvest
Nemi moves at a good pace and feels snappy. There’s not a lot of hanging around and waiting for your turn. Even the Baking phase doesn’t drag, as everyone can figure out their chosen recipes at the same time. The drafting is tremendous fun. It’s great to select a packed Harvest Card and then collect all those juicy little fruit tokens for your already stacked board. It’s tense too: the second the Harvest Cards are laid out, you’ll know which one you want to go for. There’s joy to be had in getting the one you want, doubled when one of the other players groans at your choice. The opposite is also true: there is no greater irritation than missing out on that blueberry you know you will need in the last phase.
The turning of your personal cutting board in the Preparation Phase is a smart mechanism that enforces urgency, forcing you to utilize your ingredients efficiently rather than hoarding them across rounds. Fruit doesn’t last forever, so if they haven’t been used in a recipe within two rounds, they’re past their best and off the board.
The third phase, Decoration, doesn’t bring a whole lot to the game. Okay, it’s an opportunity to grab a few extra points, but for the majority of the game you’re simply better off keeping hold of your Supplier Cards until you’re absolutely certain that you won’t have a use for them. Ingredients should never be used for bidding. During our plays, it was rare for anyone to bother bidding during the Decoration phase of the first two rounds. Ingredient cards are too precious, and you’re unsure if the other cards will come in handy later. Someone might bid a single card if they’re convinced that they won’t chase the Most Strawberry Cheesecakes and therefore grab a sneaky four points at two players or seven points at three players, but there’s a lot more points on offer from the recipes themselves. The last round tends to see more action in the Decoration Phase as it becomes clear you can’t use all of your remaining Supplier Cards, so you might as well make a stab at those extra points. Even on those rare occasions when all players decide to chuck in a bid, however, this phase remains brief, and doesn’t disrupt the flow of play much. Others may get more mileage out of this section: for us, it was relatively easy to bypass with no negative effect upon the gameplay.
Good Looks, Twisty Strategy
What stands out for me is the breadth of strategies available in a seemingly simple game. To master the festival and outperform your rival villagers, you must balance your kitchen production and maximise your use of the fruit you’ve harvested. You will often find that you need to pivot your strategy based on your draft position. If you draft early in a round, prioritize high-value Harvest Cards to lock down scarce ingredients: you will want to ensure you’ve secured a few blueberries and wild strawberries. If you draft late, snatch up Supplier Cards. You might find that Harvest Card 4 hasn’t been taken because it offers a low amount of fruit, but that card always gives three Supplier Cards, which might offer you additional tactical flexibility to adapt during the Baking phase.
Some Supplier Cards offer hidden objectives that can rake in some useful extra points at the end of the game, e.g. make the most Strawberry Cheesecakes (if the objective was eat the most Strawberry Cheesecakes, then I’m your man).
Of course there’s a few niggles. The main board is quite a size. It’s a beautiful thing with lovely images of the recipes you’re creating… but it isn’t used much during gameplay.
Conversely, the player mats are possibly a little small considering the amount of fruit tokens you can have in the first part of the game. It would be nice to have a little space to organise and prepare before you get to the cooking round.
Also, it’s interesting that each recipe has room for x9 completions, which seems beyond the limits of what’s available in the card decks. I think the most completions we managed of even the most basic of the recipes was five. A possibility here, then, to shrink that board somewhat? We barely managed to fit two players on our coffee table: this isn’t a major issue, but sometimes it’s nice to have a game where you don’t need to move to a larger surface to play, and if there’s a chance for a game to be smaller while still being comfortable to play, I’m all for it.
Rulebook Woes
The rulebook, while well-produced and suitably pretty, lacks a little clarity on occasion. For example, I was initially unsure if you take all the supplier cards under a harvest card, or just one even if there’s two or three available. The example given in the rulebook doesn’t help. As a rulebook klutz (I regularly misunderstand what I’m supposed to be doing (this is true in all of life for me)), I always appreciate when I’m shown an image-by-image example game of the first couple of turns. An additional leaflet insert would have helped me get into this game even quicker, or perhaps a player aid that gives suggestions for the first round (a la Stonemeier’s Scythe). I should point out that this is something I would like in every game, because I’m that much of a doofus.
You can tell I’m being extra (strawberry) picky here. There’s also the obvious fact that this is a strawberry-heavy game, so you could get sick of the sight of the little red beauties. Then again, Nemi is in no way hiding what this game is about or what it contains, so you know fine well what you’re getting into before you buy. Also, I’d never heard of this particular festival, and if you have any curiosity about you then you’ll do the relevant search and learn something new. (This is quite the hobby we’re involved in: just when you think you’ve seen every possible theme…) The game is beautiful enough that I personally haven’t grown tired of the little red lovelies.
It occurs to me that this focus on strawberries is something that could limit Nemi’s appeal somewhat and stop it approaching the upper levels of cozy popularity. Okay, something like Wingspan focused solely on birds, but there’s a huge variety of birds to star on the cards. Here, there’s strawberries, wild strawberries, and blueberries which aren’t even strawberries (there’s a certain word here that I’ve never written so much in my life). I know this is the point of the theme: it would be ridiculous if it was called The Strawberry Festival and then all you got in the box was bananas. But I do wonder if there’s room for a sequel, a focus on another festival maybe, something less bound to a specific type of fruit, one where you could literally create a salad.
Final Thoughts
What we cannot escape, and what should always be forefront in a board game review is whether or not it’s fun. The fact is that the mechanics are smooth, the game works, and the progression through the rounds is a lot of fun. We squeezed in almost a dozen sessions during our brief time with a review copy without feeling any dip in entertainment. Nemi sets out to be a bright and breezy gateway game, and it does a fine job of meeting this challenge. It’s a game that lingers: I thought about how much I enjoyed Nemi one day, so I found time to play it again the next. If that’s not a recommendation, then nothing is.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fiammingogames/cozy-bundle-so-happy-youre-here-the-witches-road-and-nemi
