Some boardgames are tense affairs where victory or defeat rests on the knife edge of a card draw or roll of the dice. Cozy Stickerville is not that game. As the name implies, Cozy Stickerville has players cooperating to create a story about starting up a little town. Cards are flipped up and players make choices on how to respond or what to do, and then look up the results in a book of stories. The most common result has the player(s) take a sticker from the sticker book (with over 800 stickers in it) and add it to the main game board, representing something new added to their town. It could be as simple as a bird nest or tree, or perhaps its a new building like a barn or house. There are no truly epic decisions to be had. Do you go fishing today? Perhaps read up more about the mysterious town founder? Or maybe you’ll build a house for that new couple who came to the country to get out of the city. You can’t really win or lose, but there are choices to be made and stickers put on the town will eventually reflect those choices. There’s just something visceral about peeling a sticker out of a book and then slapping it down on your own little town – I just made this! After ten 30-minute or so sessions, each representing a year of game time, the game is complete and players will be able read up on one of five final endings based on their choices within the game. Cozy Stickerville is like going through a choose-your-own adventure game with friends but when you’re done, you’ve stickered yourself a cute little town to show for it.

Cozy Stickerville
Designer: Corey Konieczka
Publisher: Unexpected Games
Players: 1-6 (best with just a few)
Ages: 8+
Time: 30 min (at a time)
(review copy furnished by publisher)

To start a game of Cozy Stickerville, choose a side of the gameboard and then you are given some starting stickers to “set up” your little town. There are two sides of the board because almost all the stickers in the game have duplicates (or at least similar variations) and thus the game can be fully played twice, once on each side. Staying with the cozy theme, this allows players to not fret too much about some decision trees, as the path not taken might just be what they get to explore in the second playthrough of the game.

A fresh board, ready for stickers to make a new story.

Once the initial town stickers are set up, it’s time to play your first year in town. At the start of each year, the players (everything is communally shared) receive some materials (food, wood, gold, ore) based on the symbols that are currently showing on the board. At first, this is typically some amount of wood and food. Then, the Year 1 event deck is shuffled. Players take turns in “control” of the story. A card is flipped from the event deck, usually giving the active player a decision to be made – perhaps spending resources, possibly gaining them, and often pushing the story forward a little bit.

Many times, these event cards will stick around and give players an option to pursue. After each event, the active player may then choose to take an action from any of the ones available on cards (from previous events) or actions displayed on the board. Any spot on the map with a special numbered label is a valid action to take. While some actions are simple (gather resources, plant a tree), most choices have the players open up to a section in the storybook and read what happens. I found those actions found on the game board to often be the most fun as they push your little town one way more than another. Once the Year 1 deck is completed, the game session ends and some cards or effects may end.

My first town, a few years in… (notice it’s slightly different than the other side of the board.)

(To avoid spoilers, scroll to the bottom of this review if you want to see some example cards from the Year deck a few years in. )

As the game goes on, there will be times where players are asked if they want to do X or Y (sometimes it’s neither if they just ignore the option) and thus the story will progress one way more than another. Do you want to head toward a farming community, or maybe a bustling town? Are you into animals or maybe trees and berries? What are you going to do about that stranger in town – do you build him a house or try to get him to leave? Events in later years will start to change their options, depending on what has happened in your town so far.

Close-up of the game board with actions that can be done by looking up a page in the storybook.

The entire game consists of ten years of fairly short (30 minutes or so) game sessions before a final ending is revealed. As mentioned, the game board is double-sided and the giant book of stickers contains enough extra stickers that the game can be played all the way through twice. Yes, that means once you are done, the game isn’t replayable anymore, but you have had at a minimum 5 or 6 fun little evenings of watching your little town develop.

Verdict
Cozy Stickerville is not a game for competitive players who have to know if they won or not. It isn’t even for players who just want to have a score at the end. However, early on, the game does point out a few goals players can (but don’t have to) take on to try and achieve before the final year is over. Perhaps the most obvious one is accumulating as many happy town stickers as you can. When you succeed at something or help someone out, you typically can add a happy sticker to your chart on the side of the board – this level will also affect story elements as the game goes on.

The game is best for players who really like to make their own goals and then see what happens as they pursue them. For example, (very little in spoilers here) in my first game I decided I wanted to become an awesome fisherperson. Thus, when it was my turn to take an action I always looked at the game situation to see if fishing might just be the thing we need.

Yes, it’s a cozy game, but there are still some awards to be earned. Players can earn titles for doing various things (like being an awesome fisherperson) and title stickers are then added to the side of the board. They come in bronze, silver, and gold – roughly according to how much effort you have to put in to get them. There are also RED title stickers which may be applied if you choose to ignore some aspects of the town.

While the game says 1 to 6 players, I think 6 players is going to be too many. You only get one action per card off the year deck so with 6 players some people might only get to make two or so decisions in the entire year. It also will water down story progression if everyone wants to do something different. I suspect up to three players might be able to each pursue their own goal but four or more would be best served if they limit their range to pursue one a few at a time.

Cozy Stickerville is a great little feel-good game for gamers who are fine without having a clear winner or loser. It is a game of story-making and it allows players to freely choose what kind of story they want to make. Make a personal goal and then see if you can reach it. The story/game would be a fun exploration, but the whole idea of a story reflected by stickers on a page takes the game to another level.

Kid Factor
This seems like a great game/activity for a wide range of ages. There is a fair bit of reading to be done, so someone has to be able to read, but even a non-reader should be able to participate and make choices about what to do when it’s their turn. The art is just what you expect, cute and a bit cartoony. Not Looney Tunes, but like from a kid’s storybook. I guess the stickers might be a bit of an issue – they can be peeled off, but not easily. There is some flex in how they’re put onto the board, but the game won’t work as well if a child puts a sticker way off-center.

Part of my town, and some action cards, a few years into the game. I’m a Fisher!

Tags: Game Reviews, Unplugged