Maple Valley: A Creature Comforts Game

Maple Valley is more adorable than it's predecessor, but less family friendly, in my opinion, with more resource types to track and more cards types with text to read rotating thru the market each round. There are only five rounds in which to move around the valley and gather items to complete your craft cards which contribute to the 3 end game festivity cards. Completing your craft cards allows you to place a cube on a festivity card spot with a matching symbol. Cube spots are limited; the player who fills in the last cube spot gains a bonus on top of the one for all players and the player with the most cubes on a festivity at game end gains majority points. There's a very slight deck building element. Your friend cards in hand give you terrain symbols for movement- which equals actions. But it's very hard to gain new friends- each friend also gives a bonus action or resource if their criteria is met. The random way in which the board resources are laid out and the combo of friends and craft cards in your starting hand can create an advantage to a lucky player with synergies, but dawdle resource cards are given to the players with the least friends at round end to sort of make up for having less actions in the next. With so many cards on display you feel like you could string together powerful combos (such as using a badge and a particular friend bonus to gain resources to stock a completed item card with end game points), but rarely do you have enough movement to get the the right locations or have the right resources to put your plan together before the cards you need are gone. Badge cards can feel near useless with the limited rounds. I had similar frustrations with the promise of yet limited opportunity for engine building in Creature Comforts- in particular your building cards only other players can use. There is strategic depth here, but it's too short and lucky to get much accomplished by design. It has the trappings of a much larger game in a truncated format. Despite my frustrations, I still rather enjoy it. So that's Maple Valley, maybe you'd like to visit?

Maple Valley is more adorable than it's predecessor, but less family friendly, in my opinion, with more resource types to track and more cards types with text to read rotating thru the market each round. There are only five rounds in which to move around the valley and gather items to complete your craft cards which contribute to the 3 end game festivity cards. Completing your craft cards allows you to place a cube on a festivity card spot with a matching symbol. Cube spots are limited; the player who fills in the last cube spot gains a bonus on top of the one for all players and the player with the most cubes on a festivity at game end gains majority points. There's a very slight deck building element. Your friend cards in hand give you terrain symbols for movement- which equals actions. But it's very hard to gain new friends- each friend also gives a bonus action or resource if their criteria is met. The random way in which the board resources are laid out and the combo of friends and craft cards in your starting hand can create an advantage to a lucky player with synergies, but dawdle resource cards are given to the players with the least friends at round end to sort of make up for having less actions in the next. With so many cards on display you feel like you could string together powerful combos (such as using a badge and a particular friend bonus to gain resources to stock a completed item card with end game points), but rarely do you have enough movement to get the the right locations or have the right resources to put your plan together before the cards you need are gone. Badge cards can feel near useless with the limited rounds. I had similar frustrations with the promise of yet limited opportunity for engine building in Creature Comforts- in particular your building cards only other players can use. There is strategic depth here, but it's too short and lucky to get much accomplished by design. It has the trappings of a much larger game in a truncated format. Despite my frustrations, I still rather enjoy it. So that's Maple Valley, maybe you'd like to visit?

You should know going into it that Maple Valley is definitely more complex than Creature Comforts. Creature Comforts was a dice placement game with set collection. Maple Valley is part deck builder (though closer to Arnak than Dominion), part area control (which is rather unique in this theme), part point-to-point movement, while still managing to retain the same set collection system of Creature Comforts. That said, if you are looking for a bit more in your game, Maple Valley is a very good step up.