Cozy Stickerville is incredibly easy to go from store to table. In fact, that’s exactly what we did. We bought it and opened it up immediately in The Game Shoppe and played through the first year while we were out on a short date.

Upon opening the box, you’re met with a Storybook and a short rulebook. Follow the instructions for setting up your first game, which includes choosing a side of the board to play your first year, placing your starting stickers, and reading the Year 1 Setup story. Once you’ve done that (and you’ve punched out the components), you’re ready to play!

The game is played over the course of 10 years (10 game sessions), where you’ll work together to build a town, and attract new citizens, all while expanding the story of your new budding town.

Each year is played over several rounds, where the player whose turn it is draws a card from the year deck, reads what it says, and then takes an action based on the cards and stickers on the board. Actions usually lead to placing new stickers on the board. Then the next player takes their turn and does the same thing, each having the opportunity to participate in the fun of placing stickers!

A game where you get to place stickers? Sign us up! When we first learned about Cozy Stickerville, we were incredibly intrigued by the concept of having both a cooperative game we could play with the family, as well as placing the beautiful stickers on the board to build out our budding city.

Like most legacy games, the choices you make during the game have an impact on future years (game sessions) and can even impact your playthrough the second time around.

Each turn brings surprises and choices that players must make that impact the future of the game. Do you decide to build a schoolhouse or do you build a firehouse? Whatever you choose could make a difference in future years when you draw a card that asks whether or not you have built that firehouse.

Cozy Stickerville is unique in that it’s designed so that there’s no “winning”. You play the game to play and have a good time. You aren’t trying to beat the clock, escape a sinking island, or save the world. You’re working together to build out your own cool town and see where the story takes you.

Unlike other games, it’s not very heavy when it comes to strategy, and that’s ok. That being said, that doesn’t mean there isn’t any. Your choices do make an impact on future years (game sessions) that you play, and so you’ll find yourselves thinking about “how can we best set ourselves up for the future”.

Cozy Stickerville is a highly cooperative game, and it's easy to get attached to the unfolding story and the people of the town. Because of this, we found ourselves working to set each other up to advance the story or to unlock something when it was someone else's turn. This is something we found could be beneficial for teaching kids to not only work together but also think of others before themselves, to have a better outcome.

Players read cards and paragraphs from the storybook out loud to the entire table, discuss, and collaborate on what to do. Ultimately, the decision is up to the player whose turn it is. No matter what they chose, we found we wanted to make decisions together that caused a positive outcome, given the cards we drew.

One of the things we love about Cozy Stickerville is the fact that, for a legacy game, you get not just one but TWO playthroughs! And one of our favorite mechanics for this is the fact that the choices you make in your first playthrough don’t just affect what happens in that playthrough, but also affect what happens in the second! As you play the game, you’ll find that many of the stickers you place on the board won’t be available for the second playthrough. Did you choose to welcome the farmer into your town on your first play-through? Well, now that the farmer isn’t available, you’ll need to welcome in the wealthy couple instead.

This means that your second playthrough will be completely different, and you’ll have to make choices based on what’s now available to you.

As we advanced through the game in our first playthrough, we started not only making choices that we thought would help us now, but also in the second playthrough. After you finish your first playthrough, you flip the board and start again!

Unfortunately, like most legacy games, you won’t be able to play it anymore after a point, and so if you want to continue playing after your second play-through, you’ll have to purchase another copy. Unlike other legacy games we’ve played, because of the stickers we’ve placed and the unique town we’ve created, we are left with a board we can put on display and a unique story we can tell for each of our play-throughs!