In the world of Maple Valley, much like for us here at the Cantina, Spring has sprung, the sun is shining, and flowers are blooming! For many, this means a mix of chores and fun with cleaning, gardening, hiking, biking, swimming, or other, outdoor activities. In Creature Comforts, however, it is already time for the Maple Valley residents to start preparing for the coming winter. Players will take on the role of an animal family as they gather resources, build amenities, DIY some home improvements, and more in a race to outperform their neighbors and create the coziest collection by Autumn’s end. Rather than keeping up with the Jones’ the competition will take place between the rabbit, squirrel, fox, raccoon, and porcupine families to find out which will make the claim to fame and be living their best life.

Creature Comforts is a 1-5 player game featuring set collection and a twist on worker placement. For this review, we are using our recently arrived Kickstarter Edition, which includes wooden tokens, “animeeples,” two mini-expansions, and a Game Trayz storage solution/insert. The game was designed by Roberta Taylor. Some of Taylor’s other projects include The Red Burnoose: Algeria 1857 and Octopus’ Garden. Illustrator Shawna JC Tenney not only worked on Creature Comforts but also provided the artwork for Bugs on Rugs (another KTBG game), Winner Winner Chicken Dinner, and Wizards of the Wild. Tenney also writes and illustrates children’s books, thus making them a great match for this project as the game is meant to be played by those ages 8 and up.

There are a lot of moving parts in Creature Comforts, but having the Game Trayz insert makes them far more manageable — especially when it comes to setup! Once the board is placed in the center of the play area, the River Wheel and Hilltop should be placed in their respective areas. The Improvements, Comforts, and Traveler decks are individually shuffled. The Traveler deck is placed face down on the Inn and the other two are set next to the board to be used during gameplay to create draft rows. Four cards are dealt face-up into the Owl’s Nest from the Comfort deck and six cards are dealt face-up into the Workshop from the Improvement deck. Supply piles of each of the other tokens (the six different types of Goods, Stories, Coins, and Lessons Learned) are placed nearby. Thanks to the insert, we just set the tray next to the board. When preparing the Valley, the decks of Forest and Meadow cards should be constructed by shuffling the individual season cards for each and stacking them facedown with Spring on the bottom, Summer, and then Fall on top. Once prepared, the Forest and Meadow decks are flipped face-up, with the bottommost Spring card now visible. Each player chooses an animal family to play as and receives the corresponding family dice, worker pawns, cottages, and home board. They also receive three Comfort cards, choosing two keep for their starting hand and one to discard. The “Early Bird” (a.k.a. first player) is chosen at random and receives the worm token and the four village dice.

Games of Creature Comforts take place over 6-8 rounds (a.k.a. “Months”) depending on if players are choosing a normal length game or a shorter variation. Each month, a new Traveler is revealed at the Inn. These cards may have effects that are active for the entire month or need to be resolved immediately. They also provide a variety of perks for those that visit the Inn while said Traveler is in the area. All players will roll their personal family dice and set them in the upper right corner of their home board. The resulting values of the dice are considered set for the entire round. Simultaneously, players will send their workers out onto the board based on needed resources and the limited information provided by their family dice. Each location will have the requirements and rewards easily displayed. Multiple players can be at the same location, but each player may only have one worker at a single location. Turn order does not matter in most locations, but it might be a factor when visiting the Workshop or the Owl’s Nest. Once all workers are placed, the Early Bird rolls the village dice and places them onto the Hilltop. Like the family dice, the resulting values are set for the month. Each player then takes their individual turn. On their turn, players will assign dice from their dice pool (the village dice and their family dice) to fulfill the requirements at the locations of their workers. During this step, they may also spend any Lesson Learned tokens to alter the value of their dice by one per token (either up or down). All worker locations with assigned dice are then resolved. Any unresolved worker locations earn the player a Lesson Learned token from the supply. After resolving locations, players will then have the chance to craft Comforts from their hand by using resources from their personal supplies. Village dice are then returned to the Hilltop and any Comfort cards over the hand size limit are discarded. At the end of each month, players perform several upkeep steps to set up for the next round. New Forest and Meadow cards are revealed, the River dial is rotated, the draft rows in both the Owl’s Nest and the Workshop are shifted and refreshed, the Traveler departs to make way for the next, and the Worm token is passed clockwise to the next player so they can begin the ensuing round. The game continues in this fashion until winter arrives (all Valley cards have been discarded). All players will get one last chance to craft any Comforts from their hand if they have the resources to do so and then proceed to tally up points. Points are earned from Comfort cards, Improvement cards, revealed Cottage slots, and leftover resources. Some Comfort cards award extra points for being paired with others or for sets of stored resources. The player with the highest score wins.

Kids Table Board Gaming (KTBG) has produced quite a few hits over the years and Creature Comforts is sure to join that list for many gamers! One of my favorite things about it is that the game is truly solo-able and doesn’t simply include a variant – setup remains the same (other than the removal of a few cards), the gameplay remains the same, scoring remains the same! This point alone was a huge selling point for me as I have limited shelf space, but also want to game when others in the house do not. Creature Comforts is made to be playable for gamers 8 and up, making it very simple to learn and incredibly family-friendly. The game offers a lot of room for further potential expansion in addition to the two micro expansions already created for it. This could be done by adding more cards to the decks already in the game (such as new Travelers or Comforts), alternative River dials, or even further expansions with more components. The game does have a lot of randomized aspects that stack on top of each other, so for those who are not in favor of chance as a major game element, be aware that this may not be the game for you. It can be very difficult to try and create a strategy when relying on limited information for worker placement, luck of a dice roll, and ever-changing location options; especially when players only get one turn per round. The expansions each add unique twists to the base game and help to direct each player into actions that may not have been otherwise chosen or “optimal” outside of their inclusion. The talents expansion, in particular, helps to draw back in some of the strategy players who may have felt the base game wasn’t their style. It’s nice that the game is somewhat customizable to allow different styles of gamers to adapt it to their preferences and allow each player to enjoy the experience. Personally, I’m excited to say that Creature Comforts is coming to retail on April 9th, 2022 for those wanting to enjoy the game!

All photos of KTBG products were taken and edited by Krista.