Apple Champagen

Video review here! https://youtu.be/1r-yCdkfgKA



Here’s a very VERY obscure game that I’ve owned for about 20 years now. Champagen by Apple, NO, not THAT Apple, Apple games are famous for the…um….for…the Champagen game! I’ve really scoured the internet for any information on this company and there’s nothing, nothing at all. It’s as obscure as they come, I’ve always thought the game to be German with the Champagen name, it just sounds like how Germans would say Champagne.

 I first stumbled across this game whilst going on holidays to visit friends in the Lake District. We’d stay in a beautiful Victorian bed and breakfast, a giant house separated into a number of flats and part of the amenities the hotel offered was toys and games for children. My brother and I stumbled upon this game and would play it whenever we were up visiting and after years, I managed to track down my own copy.

 

The game is extremely simple, you create a pyramid of the small, clear, plastic glasses with the red glass at the very top. The aim of the game is to remove glasses without making the red glass fall. If you make the red glass fall, it’s game over! Similar to how Jenga and pop up pirate work, the standard rules for this game end with one loser and multiple winners however there’s a few different ways to play the game if you wish to implement house rules. 



Setting up the game is probably the most tedious part, and this is due to how neat the pyramid needs to be. You know how you grab the nearest flat thing at the start of a game of Jenga to make sure the tower is completely straight and aligned? Yeah, well, you can’t do that with this game. It takes a steady hand to build this up, you start with a triangle of 6, then 5, 4 and so on, resting the stem of the glasses on the gaps between the glasses on the lower layer. Mentioned before, the red glass goes up top. 



You begin the game by taking it in turn to remove a glass at a time, trying your hardest not to send the whole thing tumbling down. However, taking glasses from any layer tend to invariably free up glasses on the layer immediately down from it, making it much easier for the next player to nab a glass without worry. Most games start off seemingly easy enough, and you’ll think to yourself “where’s the risk with this?” 

But as that pyramid starts to thin out, you’re left with this spindly stack of glasses and spotting your move can be really tough. It’s possible, though a rare sight, to get the game to a point of no win for the next player, no matter what they take, it’s going to fall down. I say a rare sight because whenever I’ve played this before, it’s generally people’s clumsy handedness or… general state of inebriation that sends the tower tumbling over. This is definitely a party game, one to bust out for a few rounds of with a few friends after a few drinks.



So that’s the base game, but I’ve come up with a few house rules that can make the game a bit more tactful. Firstly, I’ve tried a game where the player with the most clear glasses at the end of a game wins. “But you’re only taking one glass at a time?” I hear you say! Well, playing this way, you’re actively wanting glasses to tumble but NOT the red glass. Any glasses you free up under layers from removing a glass become yours and this becomes a careful game of skill and tact to think about which glass removal keeps you safe but also lands you with the most glasses falling. This game mode tends to be over a lot quicker, but having a clear defined winner definitely helps with keeping it fun and competitive.




It seems like a bizarre concept for a game, I get the impression someone was watching You’ve Been Framed or a America's Funniest Home Videos, saw one of these real champagne towers go south and think “hmmmmm theres a game there”.  It’s an odd game that never fails to raise a smile initially but the novelty wears off quickly and players will be happy with just a few rounds of it. Games usually last around the 5-10 minute mark though this is widely variably, all depends on how dexterous or clumsy your players are. There’s really not much else to say about this oddity, it’s fun for a short while but will leave you wanting to play Jenga instead. Copies can be found on eBay and the game also goes by the name Schampen. Oh, and if you’re wondering, I’ve not played it with the glasses full of champagne…yet…hmm, there's a thought...