Stuffed Fables

Brief Overview

"This is it...He will come for her, and we will protect her." - Mr. Stitch

Every night, as the young girl sleeps, the Nightmare King sends his minions to haunt her dreams. Fortunately, she keeps her stuffed animals by her side! These include a lion, a teddy bear, and others! Join the Stuffies as they travel to the Fall, a realm where all other stuffed animals reside and where adventures await!

Stuffed fables is a 2-4 player storytelling cooperative game in which players take control of a character and play through a story. There are 7 stories, each with a different objective. Players progress in their adventure through pages in the storybook, which makes up the game board. Your decisions and play events will determine your experience and some objectives. The game plays best with 3-4 but still playable with 2; it will just take more time.

Pros:

• Story, miniatures, and game art are beautifully designed

• The changing board keeps gameplay interesting.

• Great intro to RPGs

Cons:

• Learning the game is not straightforward if you are not familiar with RPGs/dungeon crawler type games. New rules are introduced in the story which will not be included in the rulebook.

• Can take hours to play through an entire story

• Actions may be hindered based on your dice draw\roll which can slow the game or cause frustration

Diagnosis: 8/10

Further Reading

Stuffed fables is a very light RPG game without the continuous campaign, which makes this a great intro for starting young players. The actions are not complicated and can be picked up easily. Everything refreshes at the beginning of a story, so no items carry over and no need to remember how the last story ended. We usually play this with only adults, but the game is designed with kids in mind. The first time I played this was with 2 kids. They absolutely loved the characters and did not care at all about the luck that came with their actions (there are 5 colored dice, each corresponding to a certain action you can take). Each story also has a little lesson, and at the end of each story has a prompt which you can use to start a conversation with your child, such as how to overcome fear or how to act when we meet new people.

Something to note is the amount of luck that is in this game. Your actions are determined by the 5 dice you draw at the beginning of each turn. Then, depending on what you need to do and what color die you pulled, you will roll, which adds another layer of luck. If you happen to roll terribly, it will take a while to get to the next page. This is what causes our games to sometimes last around 2-3 hours per story.

Despite this, the characters are well designed with cute items to use during their journey. There are also encounters with other stuffed animals which can grant more items, health, etc to help in gameplay. We keep coming to this game due to its storyline and very unique objectives.

If you enjoy adventure games but do not have weeks of time, try this game out. The game is a real page turner!

You may also like: Comanauts (version made for adults with more mature themes).

This was a guest review provided by Board4Two!