Matthew BaileyWe approach the last week of the marathon and there are still some excellent games to come and today is no exception.
Game 58 of the “Now & Then Summer Marathon 2024” is “Happy Home” played with Toby(6) and Jack(9)
“Happy Home” was one of my favourite games from the UK Games Expo. Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to get a copy on the day because by Saturday, they were all sold out. Luckily, I finally received a copy in the mail recently, and I’m happy to report that the game is back in stock.
Toby was excited to try as Jack had been telling him about it for about the last 2 months.
“Happy Home” is a tile-laying game themed around furnishing your brand-new home. Each player starts the game by taking a home board along with a matching coloured meeple. Everyone gets two starting pieces of furniture, which are placed in the relevant rooms.
A shop board is laid out in the middle, with a variety of furniture items placed around it. The meeples are then placed onto the track, and they will move in a clockwise direction.
On your turn, you can choose any available shop item, with the caveat that the player’s turn is determined by whoever is last around the track, similar to how “Patchwork” works. Therefore, if you choose to move all the way around the board to a faraway piece of furniture, another player might get two or three turns before it gets back to you.
A rule we didn’t play when I tried the game at the UK Games Expo, but which we did include in our playthroughs at home, is that when playing with only three players, you remove a significant chunk of cards from the deck. This limits your choices, and there might not be certain items you want in the deck. In one of the games we played, barely any bedroom furniture appeared, which caused a rush for the few pieces that did.
The goal is to lay furniture items in a way that earns the most points. Each room has three different types of furniture, and to get the maximum points for each room, you need to place one of each type in the room. Additionally, you aim to have an item of every colour in every room. Of course, it’s incredibly difficult to achieve this in every room, but that’s what you’re striving for. You also get points for pot plants, with each pot plant being worth one point, and an additional point for every empty space adjacent to it. These points can add up quickly, and it wasn’t until two or three games in that we realized just how valuable pot plants could be.
The first player to reach a point where they cannot take any more cards can take the highest-scoring welcome mat, which also grants you additional points. There are also objective cards that provide extra goals for everyone to pursue.
Unlike many tile-laying games, where the focus is on slotting everything in intelligently, “Happy Home” stands out by emphasizing the importance of making good choices on the shop track. Ensuring you take the right items to get the correct point multipliers is crucial, rather than just trying to fit things in. The objectives are a nice touch and add an extra layer of strategy, though I’m not overly fond of the “bigger is better” objective, where you get minus one point for every empty space, as it conflicts with the point-scoring potential of the pot plants.
My only small criticism is that searching for each tile once you’ve chosen the matching card can be a bit of a chore. However, because the information on the cards is quite important, I can’t think of a better way to handle this. It’s just worth noting that it can be a little annoying to search through all of the tiles to find your specific one.
It’s rare that I don’t enjoy tile-laying games, as they are one of my favourite genres, but “Happy Home” is a really good quality example. One of the most surprising things about “Happy Home” is its price. With a £19.99 RRP and available for less elsewhere, it’s an excellent value.
All of us really enjoyed this game, and if you’ve been a fan of other tile-laying games I’ve recommended in the past, such as “Subway Squeeze” and “Alice’s Garden,” this is an excellent example of the genre.
Disclaimer: “Happy Home” was kindly provided by “Alley Cat Games” for the purpose of review.
