Happy Home Review

boardgamequest.com:

In addition to being one of our behind-the-scenes editors, my wife is also a really good Interior Designer (Don’t call her a decorator though. It’s not the same thing, trust me I know). But when a game pops on my radar with a theme even somewhat related to houses and designing them, I’ve got to get it for us to try. Right now, her favorites in this small genre are Floor Plan and Dream Home. Could this be the next one to grace our home-building shelf?

Time to check out Happy Home from Alley Cat Games. In this polyomino tile laying game, you are decorating your 4 room house trying to earn the most points.

Games of Happy Home are played over a series of turns that use a time track to determine who gets to go. The player in the back of the time track gets to take an action. They must move their Meeple around the track to the next furniture piece they want to collect. They can move as far ahead as they want, but the farther they move, the longer it will be until they get to go again.

Once chosen, the player collects the card and matching tile and places it in their home. Each tile has a matching room that it has to go into (except plants and rugs) and can be freely rotated. Once done, the player at the back of the time track takes their turn.

The game ends for a player once they can’t or don’t want to add more furniture to their room. They take the highest-value welcome mat and wait for the other players to finish. Players earn points for a set of furniture in each room, having 4-5 colors in each room, the scoring card for the game, plants, and lose a point for any scratch showing. The player with the most points is the winner!

Happy Home is pretty easy to get to the table with its light ruleset. Move your person, claim the tile, and place it in your home. It’s all pretty straightforward. The only real challenge is understanding the ways you score. You want to diversify the furniture in your rooms, ideally having one of each of the three types. And you also want to make