Stuffed Fables - A Photostory

The Review Board

Posted by The Review Board on Jan 18, 2018

Stuffed Fables by Plaid Hat Games is an exciting, narrative-based adventure game in which players work together and play as the courageous stuffed animals of a young girl who are tasked with protecting her from the evil that lurks in the dark.



The game is played on an adventure book containing seven stories that take players on a journey. This journey varies from game to game because players can make different choices. The fact that there are several paths that players can choose from, or are even forced to choose from due to previous actions, makes the stories replayable. Different cards add randomization to the game and improve the story even more. However, at a certain point some of the paths and even a part of the story is known to the players, which makes the story less novel.





Stuffed Fables contains 23 detailed miniatures, 6 of which are the stuffies, twelve are minions (four Haunting Dark Hearts, four Relentless Mongrels, and four Mischievous Crawlies) and the rest are bosses, such as Crepitus, the King of Nightmares.





On their turn players randomly select five dice from the dice bag, roll and use them to perform different actions, e.g., move on the page, search for items or purchase items, and fight.

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The dice are color coded and can only be used for certain actions. For example, a red die is for brave melee attacks and some unique move actions, a black die might activate the minions, and a white die might give a stuffie more stuffing tokens (the life tokens of your stuffie).



Stuffies’ attacks, like minions and bosses’ attacks, are decided by random roll, but players can still add a level of strategy to their game and fights. Players can give a die to another stuffie, can reserve a die for a later turn and can also combine dice to get a higher roll result. Players can also anticipate the likelihood of an attack and plan ahead to avoid such an attack by either defending against it (roll a stored die), or by moving their stuffie away from the source of danger.



Stuffed Fables creates a vivid, wondrous world that can be explored. The game works well for both adult players who still like discovering imaginary worlds, as well as for families with children. Stuffed Fables also offers plenty of possibilities to interact during the game and even after the story ends (there are suggested points for discussion after each story). I do hope that Plaid Hat Games plan to release more stories, either online or as an expansion, or that fans create additional stories, because the game relies heavily on them.