Wouter & Ymke 
Hazel has invited us over to her cottage, and judging by the table, she has been preparing for quite some time. There’s tea, cake, flowers, animals, magical objects and a garden that could use a little work. So Happy You’re Here! is a light competitive game about spending time at Hazel’s cottage, collecting all those lovely things and, occasionally, being nice to the people sitting around the table.
That last part is more important than I expected. You’ll give other players cakes and teacups, work on shared friendship goals and even read affirmation cards aloud to each other. You’re still trying to finish with the most points, though, so your generosity isn’t entirely innocent. After several visits to Hazel’s cottage, we found that this combination of friendliness and competition matters much more than all those flowers might suggest.
👥 3-5 players, ages 8+
⏳️ Playing time: 30 minutes
📝 Designers: Valeria Cavasin
🎨 Artwork: Victoria Osorio
🏢 Publisher: Fiammingo Games (prototype copy provided)
Gameplay Overview
So Happy You’re Here! is played with three to five players. A three-player game lasts seven rounds, four players get six rounds and five players get five. Everyone takes one turn each round. On your turn, you play either a cottage card or an affirmation card, resolve its effects and then refill your hand and the four cards displayed on the cottage roof.
Most turns involve cottage cards. There are six types: animals, foods, beverages, plants, magical things and objects. Four cards are displayed on the roof, while each cottage card in your hand has an affinity showing which type of roof card it can be played on. These aren’t necessarily the same type. A cat, for example, has an affinity for magical things. If there’s a magical thing on the roof, you can play the cat on it. You resolve the effect of the card from your hand, then add both cards to your personal pile. Each cottage card there is worth 1 point at the end of the game.
Those effects take you to different parts of Hazel’s cottage. You might move the shared lizard along the vine and activate the space it reaches, place your lantern in an empty windowpane, or add a flower tile to the garden and resolve the effects underneath it. There’s also a magic die, plus effects for collecting birds, taking a cottage card from the roof or discard pile directly into your personal pile, drawing an affirmation card or adding another friendship card.
Some effects let you give away cakes and teacups. Everyone starts with two of each, and every one you still own at the end costs you 3 points. Give one away and you flip it to its +1 side, removing your penalty while giving another player 1 point. Friendship cards are shared between neighbouring players and ask you to collectively collect particular cards or tokens. It doesn’t matter who owns the required items. If the requirement is met at the end, both players score the points shown.
Instead of playing a cottage card, you can play an affirmation card from your hand. You read it aloud to another player, resolve its effect and give them the card. They add it to their personal pile for 2 points, while you receive a Special Thanks token worth 5. Yes, apparently saying something nice is worth more to you than to the person receiving the compliment. I’m not going to question Hazel’s accounting.
If the cottage cards in your hand aren’t useful, you can use your teapot once per game. Flip it to its -1 side before playing a card, discard all your cottage cards and draw five new ones. If you’ve already used it and cannot play a cottage card or an affirmation, you skip your turn and receive an affirmation worth 2 points without resolving its effect. After the final round, you score the cards in your personal pile, birds, Special Thanks tokens and completed friendship cards, then add or subtract points from your other tokens. The player with the most points wins.
Artwork & Components
There’s no getting around it: So Happy You’re Here! is a very colourful game. Hazel’s cottage takes up the centre of the table, covered in ivy, flowers, little windows and all sorts of illustrated details. The roof holds the four available cottage cards, while the vine and windows used during play are worked into the cottage itself. The garden has its own board alongside it, which gradually fills with flower tiles during the game.
The cards follow the same hand-drawn style. You’ll find rabbits, frogs, pancakes, tea, herbs, slippers, spell books, candles and plenty of other things that apparently belong in Hazel’s house. Each card type uses both a colour and a symbol, making the categories easier to recognise. The affirmation cards look like handwritten notes, while the friendship cards use colourful quilt patterns. There’s quite a mixture of patterns and colours on the table, and I can imagine it being a little busy for someone who prefers very clean graphic design.
Our prototype also came with plenty of illustrated tokens. There are birds, teacups, cakes, lanterns, teapots and a particularly noticeable little lizard travelling around the cottage. The garden uses polyomino tiles covered in flowers, which gradually fill the garden during play. Add the purple magic die and all the cards, and there’s plenty spread across the table for a fairly light game. My favourite part is probably the garden once several flower tiles have been placed. It gets increasingly messy as the game goes on, but then again, so does our actual garden.
Since our copy is a prototype, I don’t want to judge the final component quality based on what we received. We did regularly stop to look at a particular card or token when it appeared, though. There are lots of small details scattered around Hazel’s cottage.
Our Experience
We got comfortable with So Happy You’re Here! quite quickly, although our first game involved more checking of icons than the rules initially made me expect. None of the individual actions is difficult, but there are several places an effect can send you. Someone moves the lizard, someone else puts a lantern in a window, then a garden tile covers another couple of effects. For the first few rounds we regularly reached for the reference cards. By our next game that had mostly disappeared.
We completely underestimated the cakes and teacups in our first game. We knew they were negative points, obviously, but somehow still treated giving them away as something we’d get around to eventually. Scoring fixed that mistake rather quickly. From the next game onwards, everyone became considerably more generous. Well, sort of. Nobody wanted to give anything to whoever appeared to be winning, so there was suddenly a surprising amount of discussion about who deserved a slice of cake.
Friendship cards took us a little longer. At first, we treated them as if both neighbours were supposed to contribute equally. Eventually we stopped doing that. If my neighbour already had something we needed, I was perfectly happy to let them finish it while I concentrated elsewhere. Sometimes both of us clearly expected the other person to collect the missing card instead. Neither did. We only really noticed when we reached scoring.
The affirmation cards depended more on who was sitting around the table. Reading a positive message aloud feels slightly strange the first time because most board games don’t ask us to do anything like that. With our group, the awkwardness disappeared pretty quickly. With people you don’t know particularly well, I can imagine it being a different story. We liked how often the game had us talking to each other, checking what our neighbours were collecting and arguing over the correct recipient for a teacup.
Some friendship objectives seemed to complete themselves while others sat between us waiting for a card that never appeared. The luck is noticeable when you need something specific, although it bothered us less in such a short game. After a few plays we mostly stopped expecting every objective to work out and became better at using whatever was actually available. We wasted fewer turns, relied on our neighbours when we could and stopped hanging on to quite so much unwanted crockery.
Our Thoughts
I like that being nice to someone in So Happy You’re Here! usually helps you too. Giving away a cake removes negative points from your own score. An affirmation gives someone else points while you receive Special Thanks. A friendship card can reward you even when your neighbour supplied most of what was needed. The friendliness isn’t just something written on the cards.
You still care about who gets your help. If I have to give away a teacup, I’m probably not handing it to the person I think is winning. We could join in with the friendly theme without pretending that we had forgotten about our own scores. Honestly, I think it would be less interesting if the nice thing to do was always completely obvious.
For such straightforward turns, there are quite a few separate parts to use: the garden, lizard, lanterns, gifts, birds, affirmations and friendship cards. Most decisions are based on what’s available right now rather than something you’ve been planning for several rounds. As experienced hobby gamers, this is where we’d start wanting more after several plays. We enjoyed figuring out how everything connected, but I don’t think there are many new approaches waiting beyond that.
The straightforward rules, clear card categories and lack of much direct confrontation make it easier to put in front of a group where some people play board games every week and others only occasionally. I could see it working nicely with family or friends who enjoy lighter games and like interacting with each other along the way. The affirmation cards are worth considering when choosing your group. Some people will happily lean into them; others may prefer Hazel to keep her compliments to herself.
If we keep bringing So Happy You’re Here! back to the table, I think it’ll mostly be because of who we’re playing with. I’ll remember the failed friendship card, everyone suddenly becoming much more generous after our first game, and the suspicious amount of thought that went into deciding who deserved cake. It isn’t what we’d choose when we want a demanding game night, but with family or a relaxed group of friends, I can see it coming back to the table.
Just don’t expect cake if you’re winning.
So Happy You’re Here! is currently part of Fiammingo Games’ Cozy Bundle Kickstarter campaign, together with The Witches’ Road and Nemi: The Strawberry Festival. The campaign runs until 29 September 2026.
📝 We received a prototype copy of So Happy You’re Here! from Fiammingo Games.
