Summer in the forest is a lot of fun for the creatures that live there but as the weather begins to change, they start to prepare for the long winter ahead. It's a long time to be cooped up in your burrow so you'll want to stock up on plenty of things to make it as cozy as possible!
Creature Comforts intrigued me straight off the bat with it's fun name, cute artwork and intriguing description. I love cozying up in Winter with a mug of steaming hot chocolate and lots of blankets!
First Impressions
Upon opening the game, I have to say, it looked a little more basic than I was expecting initially. The artwork wasn't quite as cute as the artwork on the outside of the box and aside from the punch boards and a couple of packs of cards (which were really quite difficult to open without damaging the cards), there didn't seem to be many components altogether. However, once I started looking at the components and punching out the boards as well as setting the game up, I was pleasantly surprised. The components are all a really nice quality and the 'family' meeples are wooden with designs printed on.
Game Play Overview
In Creature Comforts, players take on the role of a family of critters getting ready for winter by collecting resources and creating cozy items to help them make it through the long cold period. The game is played over 6 rounds taking the players through the seasons from Spring to Fall and each round is made up of 6 phases. Players begin by revealing a new traveller at the inn and resolving any immediate effect. They then roll their family dice (the 2 dice of their colour) before assigning their family workers out to action spaces. The starting player then rolls the 4 Village dice which will be used by all players during the next phase whereby players will take it in turns to resolve actions by assigning dice of the appropriate value to the action spaces they sent their workers to earlier in the round. This may result in either some of the dice not being used or some of the workers not being able to fulfill their action (and occasionally both!). When a worker is unable to fulfill the action they were assigned to, all is not lost! They will earn a Lesson Learned token to use in future turns which can amend the value of one of their dice by 1, aiding in their pursuits. You will gain resources, comforts and improvements from actions before returning the unamended village dice to the hilltop ready for the next player and paying for any comforts in hand to gain the victory points. Once all players have carried out their turn, you will prepare the board for the next round and continue until Winter arrives. At this point you will tally up your points from comforts, cottages, improvements and resources and the player with the highest score is the winner.
Pros and Cons
The game has a nice combination of turn-based phases and real-time phases which gives you enough downtime to plan out your actions whilst also keeping the game moving at a nice speed. It is very luck based as alot of the actions require you to get certain dice results which you may not know until the village dice have been rolled, however this is nicely balanced out with the addition of the lesson learned tokens which not only give you something for failed workers, but also help conteract the luck by giving you an ability to amend the dice results without making the game unfair. It can be frustrating to not be able to use one of your workers but by still receiving something for them, it makes it easier to brush it off. Although the game is strategic, it is not heavily so as you can't easily plan turns in advance as some of the actions change each round. However all the action spaces are always available to all players which was something I really loved about the game.
Final Verdict
Overall, we enjoyed the game. It wasn't difficult to learn and the gameplay was quite straightforward. We really liked how quick to play it was and how well they combined luck and strategy. It's not a game I'd want to play twice in a row but definitely one that I can see hitting the table often.
In conclusion, we would rate this game an 8.5/10
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