Creature Comforts is Perfect for a Cozy Family Game Night
I’m not a huge Kickstarter guy, but I keep one eye on it from time to time - just to make sure I don’t miss any board games I think my family would really love. I can usually tell from the theme and the art of the game if it would be something we would be interested in trying, and Creature Comforts jumped off the screen at me very quickly.
As you can tell by a quick glance at the cover of the game, Creature Comforts is extremely appealing to folks with a certain aesthetic. It’s an incredibly cute looking game. If you’re the type of person who loves animals and nature and cozy things - this is the game for you. If you grew up loving fantasy movies about forest animals like The Secret of Nimh or Once Upon a Forest - this is your aesthetic.
“The early bird gets the worm” is the famous saying that inspires this game piece - perhaps the coolest first player token ever made.
The entire concept of the game is soothing and caters to my sensibilities. It speaks to my desire to just sit by the fire with cozy socks on, while drinking a cup of hot chocolate. That about sums up the positive energy this game sends out into the world, so if those sound like vibes you might enjoy - and I can’t imagine anyone who doesn’t like vibes like that - then Creature Comforts is worth looking into. We aren’t fighting here - we’re trying to get cozy.
And although we are very big into plot, setting, and immersion in our family, the mechanics of the game obviously have to work for us as well. Of course it has to be fun for us, but also not overly complicated. Our kids are currently 6 and 9, and we don’t bother with any board games that don’t work for at least one of them.
Is Creature Comforts Good for Kids?
Creature Comforts is recommended for ages 8+, and I think they’ve actually nailed the age recommendation - which is something of a rarity these days. Our 9-year-old son can handle it and our 6-year-old isn’t quite ready for the strategic choices that need to be made.
And there really are quite a few choices that need to be made every single turn. Creature Comforts is a worker-placement game. And there are 12 different locations to choose from when you’re placing your animal friends on your turn. This of course involves planning your strategy, realizing which materials you might need to collect, and even a bit of calculating the odds of your success.
We don’t have a ton of worker-placement games, but it turns out we like them a lot. Out of the games we do have in this genre - Santa’s Workshop and Stardew Valley are 2 of my very favorite games in our entire collection. So I was happy and excited to try a new one. So, at this point, I think it’s safe to say that both the mechanics and the theme of Creature Comforts are a hit for us.
As far as our official child tester is concerned, even at the age of 9, and with quite a bit of board game experience, our son has been hit or miss with whether or not he puts much thought into where he’s placing his workers. But I don’t think his lapse in attention speaks to the complexity of the game. I think it’s speaking to the built-in moments of inaction for players when it isn’t their turn.
The beautiful wooden resource tokens that were exclusive to the Kickstarter version of the game.
Now, to be fair, there are always extra pauses in the action every time we play a new board game. That’s because we often have to consult the rules more often on our first playthrough. And, as an aside, I assure you that there’s no quicker way to make my wife and son hate a game than for me to be unprepared with memorizing the rules. So, believe me, I was well-prepared with Creature Comforts!
So it wasn’t constant trips back to the rule book that was affecting my son’s attention span, it was actually the fact that every player has all of this thinking time on their turn to resolve the dice and their workers by themselves. Of course this didn’t bother my wife and I at all, but it’s absolutely something to keep in mind for the attention span of little ones.
And I only bring this up because you can actually play Creature Comforts with up to 5 people. I think it works quite well for us with only the 3 players - and I’m afraid we would actually lose our son entirely if he had to sit through the turns of 2 more people deciding what to do with their dice before he got to do anything again.
How to Play Creature Comforts
So what is it that you’re actually doing on your turn? Well, everyone simultaneously places their cute animal meeples (fox, rabbit, raccoon, or hedgehog) on the various locations around the board. Maybe you want to gather resources like yarn or wood or mushrooms. Maybe you want to build useful new additions onto your cottage - like a wheelbarrow or a sauna. Or maybe you want to collect recipes for some cozy comforts like a nice rocking chair, a pie, or a mandolin.
There’s also a location with a different friendly animal character visiting town every single turn. There’s a snapping turtle, a Canada lynx, a leopard frog, and many more. And, besides being a normal location where you can do things like trade resources, these visitors also often tweak the rules for the entire round. Not only do these visitors add a lot of replay value and variability, but they are also a wonderful addition to the cute theme and world-building.
After everyone has placed their 4 animal workers on the board, everyone gets their own turn 1 at a time. There are 4 communal dice that everyone shares, and 2 personal dice that are just for you. And each location on the board has a requirement to activate that worker. Maybe it just needs a die with a 4 on it. Maybe it needs 2 dice that add up to 10. So you’ll have choices to make about which workers get activated and, sometimes, which ones don’t.
Back to the most wonderful part about this game, it’s all about building the coziest home and collecting the most cozy knick knacks. Seriously, how wonderful is that? The more recipes you craft and the more additions you build, the more points you score. Everything you craft is worth a number of points, and occasionally you’ll find synergy between different items. It’s actually quite simple to explain, which is probably why the age recommendation is 8+. It also plays very smoothly as a solo game, which I think is always a very welcome bonus.
I think we ended up waiting more than a year for Creature Comforts to hit our doorstep after Kickstarting it, so, after the early investment and the long wait, I’m extremely happy to report that it’s more than just incredibly cute art and design. It’s no secret that I’m easily enticed by looks and storytelling - so it’s always nice to have that instinct validated with another wonderful family board game.
Are you also easily tempted by cute woodland critters on a game box? Have you tried Creature Comforts yet? Let us know in the comments!
