Review: Stay At Home - A little shared trauma as a treat

The other day I found myself looking at the release date of a game on my shelf and came to the shock realisation that 2020 wasn't just a year or two ago. It's been four years since the world was plunged into a pandemic and the chaotic response as various governments tried desperately to ignore deal with the socio/political/economic ramifications of entire countries trying to isolate themselves nationally and internationally. It feels as though many of us have struggled to move on from this global event and the way this has manifested is the shared delusion that this all somehow happened more recently than it actually did. 

Stay At Home - Three ominous words

Despite that odd symptom, I have come to realise quite how much my brain had chosen to forget through the game we played last night, Stay At Home.

"A card game that's nostalgic for all the wrong reasons"

First of all, I would like to send my thanks to the creator of this game who kindly gifted me a copy for review!

Stay At Home is a simple card game by Fizzgig Games in which 2-4 players strategically take and play cards to try and end the game with the largest proportion of their household "Out", meaning not stuck in isolation. This is done through humorous cards that allow one or more of your household of 4 to leave the house on errands such as "drug run", "toilet paper quest", and a very disgruntled looking "key worker" (round of applause anyone?). However, working against you are regular government announcements and stop cards which work to complicate play or send members of your household home again. There are also stockpile cards which work against you during play by clogging up your hand, but are valuable in the event of a tie-break at the end of the game.

The winning player is the one who has the most "out" cards in front of them at the end and a decent supply of stockpile cards in the event of a draw. 

While the game was quick to play and learn, I felt there was decent replay value through the luck of the draw. Sadly on our first play through we seemed to draw almost all the government announcement cards at the start of the game so there was little effect (we hadn't had a chance to get many people out of our houses yet!), but despite this there was fun to be had in fighting each other and sending people home.

During the game we found ourselves reminiscing about the weird and confusing times, which was fun in a gallows-humour way and it was an easy game to play while also holding conversation. I also really enjoyed the mechanic of the four house cards in front of each player that flipped over as members of the household are allowed out. I'm not sure I've come across something similar in other card games of the like.

I think it would be a fair comparison to liken this to games such as Fluxx and Exploding Kittens; an easy and accessible game to play with family (depending on how raw feelings still are about that turbulent period). 

It would be interesting to see how the game changed with a greater number of green cards that enabled house holds to go out, would this also increase the underhanded actions of players as they vie for top place? Furthermore, I feel the game would re-skin well to cover a different theme, something along the lines of medieval plagues would be a fun redesign.

Overall, this is an enjoyable game to bring out at family gatherings and the humour sticks the landing, without feeling contrived.