I am part of the Asmodee UK Blogger Board Game Club run by Playtime PR. Each month 50 bloggers are sent a board game to play and put to the test. This month we were sent the Stuffed Fables game to play.
Stuffed Fables is a Story based board game from Plaid Hat Games. It’s a role play game which fans of Pixar films will probably really enjoy. All of the action takes place in the spiral-bound storybook which contains all the rules, a story guide, and game board.
In the box you will find –
1 Rulebook; 1 Storybook; 40 Card Discovery Deck; 1 Sideboard; 6 Stuffy Figures; 17 Minion Figures; 35 Dice; 1 Dice Bag; 15 Buttons; 6 Character Cards; 29 Lost Cards; 10 Sleep Cards; 46 Item Cards; 12 Minion Cards; 8 Environment Cards; 34 Status Cards; 4 Reference Cards; 30 Stuffing Tokens; 15 Heart Tokens; 4 Objective Tokens; 4 Lost Tokens; 1 Bookmark Token; a Red Wagon Token; 1 Train Token and 1 Door Token.
As you can see, there are a lot of elements to this game and if you like quick fire games with simple rules, this game is not for you. To play it properly I think someone needs to sit down for an evening, read the rules and fully understand them so they can lead the rest of the group. We played a couple of chapters. It took a long time and there was a lot of reading and re-reading of the rules which probably made it feel like harder work than it was.
The story follows a group of stuffed toys who are sworn to protect the little girl who owns them and loves them. The stuffed toys awake to defend the little girl from all the monsters who creep out at night. Each player plays the role of one of the heroic stuffed toys; so throughout the game you must fight to defend the little girl and keep her safe. Stuffed Fables is suitable for people aged 7+.
To play, you assign and roll colour-coded dice to perform a variety of actions, from melee attacks, to leaping across conveyor belts, or steering a racing wagon down a hill. The chapters are one page long and the action should be quicker than we managed. Some of the characters really reminded us of the Toy Story films. You don’t have to play it all in one sitting, you can play a chapter or two at a time and got back to it later. This makes is fairly easy to dip in and out of, but it’d probably best if you can play for an hour or two in one sitting.
I’ve spoken to several friends over the last few days about Stuffed Fables, half of them didn’t like it, the other half really loved it. I think if you’re into Dragon Crawler type role play, then you will most likely love this. If you’ve never tried role play before, then this will take some getting used to. I quite liked it and suspect if I was playing with people who also enjoyed it then I would love it. I think I need to find different people to play this with. My husband just didn’t like it and that made it feel like hard work.
There are a lot of bits and pieces in the box, it’s a complex game with lots of elements. It costs around £55 which is a lot of money to spend on a board game; but with all the elements and figures included and the amount of game play in there, I think it’s probably worth it. It’s very beautifully illustrated and put together, which makes it really feel like a premium product. It’s quite a niche game, but role play fans will almost certainly enjoy playing it.
Stuffed Fables is available from a wide range of retailers including Amazon.