Summary
A game for 2 – 5 players
Play time is 20 to 45 minutes
Publisher is Alley Cat Games
Introduction
Are you the player who will decorate a Happy Home? In this exciting strategy game, players move around the shop board to collect furniture tiles and need to place them in their house. Fulfill objectives and complete sets of furniture in each room to score points.
The player with the most points at the end of the game wins the title of the most creative home decorator! Let’s get started on your decorating styles!
Setting up the game
HAPPY HOME
Summary A game for 2 – 5 players Playing time is 20 – 45 minutes Publisher is Alley Cat Games
Introduction
Are you the player who will decorate a Happy Home? In this exciting strategy game, players move around the shop board to collect furniture tiles and need to place them in their house. Fulfill objectives and complete sets of furniture in each room to score points.
The player with the most points at the end of the game wins the title of the most creative home decorator! Let’s get started on your decorating styles!
Setting up the game:
Give every player their player board, called the home board.
Related to the player count, place the shop board on the correct side, in the middle of the play area. Going clockwise, all players will place their meeple on the shop board.
The item tiles can be a central supply nearby the shop board, sorted by type.
Then, the 10 starting furniture cards need to be shuffled, and each player will receive two cards. The types of furniture shown on the cards are the players’ starting tiles, which can be placed on their home board.
Shuffle the remaining deck of item cards and quantities related to the player count.
Draw cards and place them around the shop board in spots where there are no meeples, starting from the first empty spot after the last meeple.
Then, shuffle the design objective cards and sort the welcome mats into a face-up stack, starting with the lowest value on the bottom, and place this beside the shop board.
And keep the scorepad nearby; the players are ready to shop until they drop!
Let’s play
In turns, players will place their meeple clockwise around the shop board. Depending on the player count, when players place their meeple on an empty shop spot where there are item cards, they need to take the card and the furniture shown on it. This item needs to be placed into the player’s home board. The items are related to different rooms available on each home board. But be careful; players can only place these items once, and they can’t be adjusted later in the game!
Back to the shop board: when the player has fulfilled these actions and is still the last player in the shopping route, they can proceed with this action again. So, the last player in the shopping line is the so-called starting player.
The nice thing is that you’re free to choose which item card a player prefers; however, this could waste a lot of moves for you, while others can move until they pass by you or all item cards are used.
Yes, there are items like rugs and plants that aren’t related to a dedicated room and can fill up those leftover spaces. The fun thing is that some combinations in the diversity of furniture can grant some nice end scoring points.
When the item card round on the shop board is empty, it needs to be filled by the game deck. Always starting after where the meeples are, clockwise around the board. Because the quantity of cards is related to the player count and they do not refresh discarded cards, this will determine the final round of the game. Each player can choose, and if they are still able to do so, shop until they drop or stop shopping and choose to take the upper tile of the “Welcome” mats. The first player who does this will achieve the highest amount of points. In the end, all players will take this mat to finish the game and start the end scoring.
The player with the highest score will be the winner!
Scoring will be based on the following criteria:
- Furniture: score points for different core pieces in the four rooms.
- Colors: score points if a color is indicated on the furniture, and check how many rooms these colors are in.
- Pot plants: they are already worth 1 point, and 1 extra point if they are connected by adjacent empty floor tiles.
- Welcome mats: the points indicated on them.
- Rugs: only score points in combination with other elements, like the colors.
- Design objective card: which each player gets before starting.
- Scratches: this will result in losing points if scratches are still visible and not covered by items.
Conclusion & final score
Difficulty: 2.00/ 5
Re-playability: 7
Our score: 7 out of 10 dice
This is a fun and nicely balanced game. It’s for everyone and easy to get on the table.
However, there are already a lot of parts in the box, which can make the setup a bit too long. Storing it already divided will significantly increase this setup time.
The quality chosen for the materials is good, and the artwork is nice. We did notice that the way the shop board needs to be folded is too much and can break easily, so be careful. The only thing that we think that could be better is to change the different houses, so each of the player would have a different home. This was also a nice way to give the game a nice twist and more challenging.
The way the game mechanics are applied, such as the last player being the starting player, is very good. This way, the interaction is nicely triggered between the players. Also, the game has nice gameplay without a significant influence from the number of players. This really determines the quality of these types of games, so this is fine when you play Happy Home.
Puzzle, mix, and sometimes get frustrated when you realize you placed the couch on the wrong wall or when you’ve just missed the needed color for the scoring card. It makes the game interesting and pushes players to their advanced mode.
So, it’s a fun, easy, and a small box. No one can say anything about why it can’t be on the table when you have some spare time that can be filled with a game of Happy Home.
Thanks to Publisher for this review copy and the opportunity to write about it.
