A Place for All My Books – Cozy and Challenging

“I have to be alone very often. I’d be perfectly happy if I spent Saturday night until Monday morning alone in my apartment. That’s how I refuel.”

Audrey Hepburn

So many board games are structured around “extrovert” things. What about a game that’s built around what introverts like: adding to and re-arranging a collection, while spending as little time as possible interacting with other people?

A Place for All My Books, by Alex Cutler and Michael Mihealsick, is a game built for introverts. This game for 1-4 players is published by Smirk & Dagger Games, and takes a little under 60 minutes to play.

How to Play

Set up the central town board and individual player apartment boards, along with a starting collection of books and project cards. Then choose a first player: of course, it should be whoever most recently acquired a new book. Turns proceed clockwise.

Your Turn

On your turn, you choose a single action.

If you’re “at home”, you can re-arrange books with the Gather or Sort actions. Or you could gain rewards for completed Little Projects through the Admire action, or Rest to draw more Little Projects cards. And of course, you could always just Read a Book. All of these actions also add to your “social battery” meter.

If you’re ready to venture out, you can take the Leave the House action, which costs a whopping FIVE social battery, but moves you into town and immediately grants another action.

All of the actions in town (Bookstore, Library, Shoppes, Exchange) have a cost and will bring down your battery level. But town is the place to go to acquire more books and Other Neat Stuff.

If you leave town as your action, return your meeple to your apartment then transfer the stack(s) from your Backpack into space(s) in your apartment. Then take an action in your apartment.

You’re never allowed to take the same action two turns in a row – which means your meeple must always move to a new space on your turn.

Major Accomplishments

While the Little Projects are personal challenges and take an action (Admire) to complete, a Major Accomplishment is a communal goal that all players can claim as soon as they have achieved it.

The first player to complete a Major Accomplishment gets the best reward. Any other players who complete it later gain only the secondary award. Each game will have only three Major Accomplishments (selected randomly).

Game End

Every time any player leaves their apartment and enters town, the sun token advances along its track. The sun triggers the end of the game when it reaches the final space on its track. Players finish the round, and then everyone gets one final turn (score any remaining Little Projects if you can!). Then add up the scores.

At the end of the game, gain points for each book, your finished Little Projects, Major Accomplishments, and Other Neat Stuff. If you’ve got any social battery left, you get a tiny point boost from that, too. Who can make their apartment the coziest?

Solo Mode

Of course, a game for introverts has to have a way to play solo. Introducing Penelope Eveready, a surprisingly extroverted automated opponent. She spends all her time in town. Her action each turn is determined by a deck of Rival cards, which stack up slowly, allowing her more powerful actions over time.

But those Rival cards can be removed! Complete and Admire Little Project cards that match the color of Rival cards to remove them from the action stack and shuffle them back into the deck. Completing a Major Accomplishment also allows you to choose a color to remove.

Penelope collects books, Little Project cards, and Other Neat Stuff, and scores them all at the end of the game. You win only if your score is higher than hers – and you immediately lose if the Rival deck runs out of cards to draw.

Impressions

I’m an avid reader and kind of an introvert. I have overflowing bookshelves in several places around our house. A Place for All My Books should be a perfect fit.

This game is all about reading books, arranging books, and acquiring new books (and a few accessories). It’s sort of a worker placement game (although you only have one worker), and sort of a set-collection / pattern matching game.

It’s fun to puzzle out the most efficient ways to place and re-arrange the books to get the Little Projects and Major Accomplishments bonuses.

Introverts Rejoice! Separately. In Your Own Space.

The most interesting thing about A Place for All My Books is the social battery mechanic. Everything you do in your apartment increases your battery, and everything you do in town decreases it. And every time you enter town, the sun moves closer to the end of the game.

So there’s a constant tension of how much battery to build up with “at home” turns before taking the leap to enter town.

Remember, social battery is not the goal of the game. Instead, it’s the currency you use – to buy books, of course! But not only books. It’s important to get new Little Projects – hopefully ones that require minimal re-arrangement in your home. And maybe some Other Neat Stuff for even more cozy points.

I Feel Seen

As I said above, A Place for All My Books should be perfect for me. I feel represented here in a way that’s rare in boardgames. Because I always want more books. And sometimes it’s hard to convince myself to leave the house to do things.

But it also makes me a little uncomfortable. I do have lots of books at home, but unlike in the game, I do not stack them up in every room and fill the house. I won’t let myself become a hoarder – everything needs to have a home (“A Place“), and that means regularly and thoughtfully purging books and boardgames! If I do it right, my home can be welcoming, instead of cluttered.

In the end, playing A Place for All My Books actually reassures me that I could be much worse about acquiring books. And even as I enjoy the puzzle of it all, it leaves me happy that my house is filled with family. Even if they make it hard to read my books sometimes.

Book-lovers, you can find A Place for All My Books at Barnes & Noble, on Amazon, direct from Smirk & Dagger Games, or ask for it at your local game store.

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The Family Gamers received a promotional copy of A Place for All My Books from Smirk & Dagger Games for this review.

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