I'll be honest, when I first heard the name Cozy Stickerville, I wasn't immediately won over. The title is trying far too hard to be twee, and comes across as a cloying Lisa Frank style slap across the face. Nevertheless, this sticker-based legacy board game experiments with some bold new ideas, and has genuinely piqued my interest for when it releases on the 6th February.
Developed by Unexpected Games, Cozy Stickerville describes itself as "a legacy game without barriers". 1-4 players start with a blank plot of land, and gradually fill it in with a selection of stickers as their village grows and develops into a full community.
The game takes place over ten in-game years, each of which is a different play session. Once you've reached one of the five possible endings, you can flip the board around and try to earn one of the other four.
Your actions can alter the state of your village, generating happiness, progress, or upset. This will impact the temperament of the residents who will gradually populate your buildings. In standard legacy game style, you'll regularly be reading passages from a storybook as you play, and using the fragments of narrative inside to inform your decision making.
You also earn a variety of "milestones" as you play. These work like achievements in a video game, and despite Cozy Stickerville's painfully cutesy presentation, these demonstrate that the game can go to some surprisingly dark places. Whether intentionally or through mismanagement, you can unleash hunger, poison, and termites on all of the citizens of your little adhesive town.
Does Cozy Stickerville appeal to you, or is it just a smidgen too saccharine for your tastes? Let us know in the Wargamer Discord.
If you're in the mood for more long-form board gaming, check out our list of the best legacy games.