Based on your choices, you’ll be advancing further into the game’s mystery house, and get closer to the secrets that lurk at its heart. While the simple gameplay isn’t very challenging, the narrative here remains excellent, and presents a number of intriguing puzzles for players to overcome. The path to victory isn’t always clear – and it’s likely you’ll run into unexpected death once or more during your playthrough – but mounting each surprise as it comes is a real delight. I would not choose to play alone either but I would certainly want to play with my children and if my family were not into gaming it’s a gateway game. As a parent (and future grandparent), I also love that Plaid Hat Games includes a Talking Points section at the end of each story. They each present topics to discuss with your children that are relevant from the just-completed story. The miniatures are fantastic too! When drawing an item card (excepting party items) you may either equip the card to your stuffy or trade it to another player (who must then immediately equip it to her stuffy). When drawing a party item card put it in reach of all players. All players can freely use party items and there is no limit to the number you can have in play. Equipment Slots

The story is told through the eyes of the stuffies as they battle to make sure their young girl is not woken during the night. Learning Stuffed Fables from the rulebook wasn’t as intuitive as we had hoped. (This could totally come down to our learning styles and may not be an issue for others.) There’s a lot to take in and prepare for in your first game so plan on reading the rules the day or so before you play. I’d also recommend watching the How to Play video from Rodney Smith as well, especially if you are a visual learner. There has been something of a trend where many board games try to be as brutal as possible; just ask anyone who has ever played Mansions of Madness. But Stuffed Fables avoids the temptation to ramp up the difficulty. It’s quite easy to succeed in the game, partially because even when things go wrong, it is rarely an automatic game over. When you lose your health (stuffing), your character becomes incapacitated and must be regain their life either with help from another player or by performing a health-gaining action. Up until fairly recently, The Mind was considered to be the go-to cooperative card game. Though its main gameplay mechanic makes for an unusual playing experience - players cannot talk to one another - it’s always felt a little too simple. Which is why The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine is such a fantastic co-op card game; it takes the central concept of The Mind, no vocal communication, and expands upon it to provide a greater challenge. At times the game will direct players to gain a heart. A heart can be spent to perform an earned ability on your stuffy's card. A stuffy's active ability can be performed without having to spend a heart.

Adventure Awaits

To move your stuffies around the world and interact you draw coloured dice from a bag and choose how to assign them. Some have unique uses like searching or fighting. For each action you choose you roll the chosen amount of dice and take the appropriate action. You can boost these rolls through item cards, and even save a dice for a future turn or give one to a fellow stuffy. If you’ve never played Pandemic or Pandemic Legacy before, Season 0 is a great starting point for the co-op board game series. If you're already a fan, it’s an excellent prequel that deepens the world and story of the previous games. Either way, you should play Pandemic Legacy: Season 0 – a fantastic co-op board game in a series of fantastic co-op board games. Note: A purple die is used 'in place' of another colored die. The purple die does not 'become' the other color. Examples:

Journeys in Middle-earth is the next evolutionary adventure game from Fantasy Flight Games, following in the wake of Mansion of Madness and Descent: Journeys in the Dark. For RPG-like board games, it doesn't get much more classically-themed than Tolkien's epic fantasy series. A stuffy will return from being collapsed if it gains 1 or more stuffing. A collapsed stuffy can gain stuffing when another stuffy takes an encourage action to give it a stuffing or by finding stuffing on its turn using a white stuffing die. Both earned abilities and active abilities can be performed at any time, unless otherwise specified on your stuffy's card. When a heart is spent it is returned to the supply. When a player takes damage, they lose stuffing from their character. If they are out of stuffing, they collapse immediately. Players can lose if all of the stuffies are collapsed simultaneously, although it is unlikely. The stuffies will almost assuredly make it to the end of the story, although the chapter can take a slightly different route depending on the success of the players throughout their adventure. Instead of spending a die, you may reserveit. A reserved die is stored on your stuffy's card. There is no need to roll a die you may reserving. A reserved die can be spent to defend against damage or can be spent on one of your future turns. You cannot reserve a die if there is already one on your stuffy's card. EncourageA stuffy may be moved through a space containing another stuffy, but cannot end its movement on that space.

There is a bookkeeper token that passes around the table that designates both the first player and who should be reading the passages from the book when needed. This is a great idea when playing with older children—I’m a big fan of using games as educational tools, especially when kids won’t even recognize it.The game play is also very straightforward to all players to grasp. Pull out some dice, choose which ones to use based on what you want to do, and then roll them to use the results. Set in the Lovecraftian expanded universe of the Arkham Horror Files series, Mansions of Madness does what it says on the box: players venture into spooky houses (or sometimes unsettling city streets) to discover what awful horror befell their residents – and avoid falling victim to the same doom.