Let's create coziness together! Overview of the board game Creature Comforts

REVIEW

 Life in the forest is a lot of fun, at least while the sun is shining and the leaves are on the trees. However, these days do not last forever, and long before the weather begins to change, the wise animals begin to harvest for the long, cold winter. You will be spending many months huddled in your hole, and you want to make it as cozy as possible. A nice bowl of soup, a comfortable rocking chair, toys and games will help the dark winter days pass quickly.

 In Creature Comforts, you spend the spring, summer, and fall gathering various goods from the forest and spending them on items that will make your home more inviting while the world outside is covered in a layer of snow. Each round you send family members to different locations to get supplies. If they fall short of their goal, they will learn a lesson and be better prepared next time. The family that created the most comfortable den wins.

GAME PROCESS

 A game of Creature Comforts lasts for 8 rounds (or months) and you go through 3 seasons: Spring, Summer and Fall.

 At the beginning of the round, a new Traveler opens. You can visit the Traveler by placing one of your workers there to perform a powerful action only available this round.

 After that, all players roll their dice from two families (of their player's color) and they can send their workers to different locations on the main board. When everyone has finished, the current starting player rolls a family die (4 white dice).

 Now the players take turns distributing all the dice (4 white dice + 2 family dice) to their workers. Some jobs require certain values or sequences to activate. If they have fully met the requirements for the cube, they can take a work action and return it to their personal tablet. Workers that cannot be activated give you a Lesson Learned token that can be used on your next turn to increase or decrease the value of the die. Worker actions include upgrading buildings, gathering/converting resources, visiting a traveler, and gaining new comfort cards.

 At the end of their turn, players can craft comfort goods from their comfort cards by paying the required resources. When all players have finished, the next round begins. If it was the last player of the fall month, go to the final score.

IMPRESSION

 Creature Comforts is one of those games that immediately catches your eye with its beautiful design. As soon as I saw it, I immediately wondered if the gameplay and mechanics were as interesting as the look of the game. Because of this, I ignored Creature Comforts for a while because I thought it lacked depth. After trying it out at a local meet my opinion changed, let me tell you why.

 The point of Creature Comforts is really quite simple. You place workers in different locations, collect resources and create comfort cards to earn points. However, what makes Create Comforts unique is how you activate these workers. You need to have the necessary dice to activate and this will push your luck a bit. Do you choose a place that gives more resources but with stricter requirements, or do you play it safe? Since you've only rolled your family dice (2 out of 6) when assigning workers, you'll never be 100% sure you'll be able to activate everything you want. Fortunately, if you fail to activate a worker, you are compensated in the form of a lesson learned token.

 Activating workers, changing the traveler each round (and triggering some special rules for that round), and changing worker locations in the forest and valley add a lot of weight to decision making. It gives the game more depth than I originally expected.

 Apart from the unique activation of the worker, there is not much innovation in the game. Actions can also feel pretty repetitive, as they usually involve one of three things: getting resources, converting resources, or getting cards. With two players, we sometimes had a hard time finding the right cards in the deck. Although there are duplicates in the deck, sometimes this allowed us to miss a better opportunity to get points. I also found the scoring mechanics on comfort maps to be pretty boring (matching cards or placing resources on them) and I think with a bit of effort it could have added more strategy to the game.

 There has already been a lot of discussion about the length of the Creature Comforts game. If playing with experienced gamers I don't think it's a problem, if you're playing with kids they might lose focus until it's their turn. While I'm probably not part of the primary target audience for Create Comforts, I still enjoyed my batches. I think the game will stay in my collection for quiet night play or use as a starter game to introduce new players of all backgrounds to the hobby.

PROS OF THE GAME

• Looks great on the table
• The theme and design make it an accessible family game
• An interesting worker activation that adds a push your luck element
• It has more depth than you might think

CONS OF THE GAME

• Actions may be repeated
• Cooldown cards could have more interesting scoring options
• In a two-player game, you sometimes don't get the right cards
• If you play with adults, the length of the game is normal, children may lose concentration due to the long playing time (there is a shorter version)

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DESCRIPTION OF THE BOARD GAME "CREATURE COMFORTS" What is on the agenda of forest dwellers? Of course, preparing for winter: some are going to hibernate, some are growing thicker fur, but absolutely everyone is trying to accumulate as much cold provisions, wood, other resources and useful items for leisure and recreation. Will we help the animals in this? Do not even doubt, probably, yes! And even with great pleasure! Spread the field! The action of the bright game, which was highly ap..