A Place for All My Books is a worker placement, pattern-building game.
Title: A Place for All My Books
Year Published: 2025
Designer: Alex Cutler, Michael Mihealsick
Publisher: Smirk & Dagger Games
Players: 1-4
Game Time: ~60 minutes
Set-up Time: ~2 minutes
Ages: 10+
Theme: A book collector curating and sorting their collection.
Mechanisms: Worker Placement, Pattern building
How to win: Score the most points by collecting books, completing little projects, major accomplishments, and collecting ‘other neat stuff’.
Game Description
Players arrange stacks of books in different rooms of their apartment as personal projects. When done, they can admire their accomplishments and gain their rewards, not least of which is renewed energy, which they can then spend to head out into the village to pick up more books!
How to play A Place for All My Books
Learn how to play A Place for All My Books in a quick and concise way. I also include the rules for solo play.
Main Mechanisms
Worker placement… It does feel more like action selection as you’re just moving from action to action in the apartment. But in the village, it feels like ‘proper’ worker placement.
You also have pattern building as you move books around your apartment to achieve goals.
USP
I think the USP is the theme. Using social battery as a resource is relatable!
Theme
It’s an interesting theme. I don’t have a huge book collection, but if I think of it as board games or Magic: The Gathering cards, it makes sense.
You do get satisfaction from tiding, sorting and curating your collection, whatever it is.
Setup & Rulebook
Setup is simple. The only weird bit is that you have to fish certain colour books out of the bag.
The rulebook does a good job, and most of the main bits of the rules are on the apartment and village boards and the cards anyway.
Components & Artwork
The wooden books are nice, but only stickered on one side.
The art is really sweet.
Ease of Teaching
The game is easy to teach, like I said, almost all of the rules are on the components.
It’s just the little fiddly bits that it doesn’t show that are the problems.
Similar Games
Pattern builders like Cascadia and Harmonies.
I can’t think of many where you are constantly moving your ‘things next to other things’ to meet new goals.
A Place for All My Books Review
Positives
The overall look of the game is very quaint.
A very fun puzzle for you to work out, it’s trickier than it looks.
The constantly evolving puzzle really makes you think.
As you have different major accomplishments every game, as well as little projects and ‘other neat stuff’, games feel different.
Negatives
The variability is good, but I’m not 100% sure it’s enough to keep the game fresh in the long term.
It’s hard to undo a turn if you accidentally take the wrong action. Two actions in the apartment are very similar, so I did it quite a bit.
Running to capture as many ‘other neat stuff’ cards as possible seems like a dominant strategy.
A Place for All My Books Round-Up
A fun puzzle, with a familiar theme and a cosy look.
Rating
I give it 6/10