Cozy Cat Cafe: Mousing Around
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You adopt another cat, buy a red armchair, invite the lady with the hat. Everything perfect. Then someone puts a mouse in your coffee and you have to recalculate everything from scratch.
WHAT IT'S ABOUT
When cats' coffee becomes a mouse puzzle
Mousing Around is the expansion for Cozy Cat Cafe (base game by Sam Rostami, published by Polyra Limited). It adds a new mechanic: mice. Cards you can place in your café — or opponents' — to complicate patterns, alter scores, and open new strategies with special customers who want to see mice.
The base game is a competitive polyomino puzzle: you adopt cats, buy furniture, place fixed tiles (not rotatable) on your café board to meet customer requirements and accumulate points. Mousing Around introduces a layer of chaos: mice give penalties, but some customers request them. You must find the right balance between order and disorder to build the coziest café in town.
What they say abroad
"The combo of cozy polyomino and take-that card tricks is initially surprising"
The mix between cozy polyominoes and take-that cards is initially surprising
— Stami Games
This expansion adds an element of calculated risk to the puzzle: you have to decide when mice are a problem and when they are a resource. The first game will be chaotic, the second strategic.
— FroGames
Cozy Cat Cafe: Mousing Around
The base game includes a Botlet deck that simulates an opponent, drawing cards to place cats and furniture. The Mousing Around expansion likely adds mouse cards to the Botlet, but the experience loses all the direct interaction (placing mice for others) which is the heart of the expansion. A good alternative for puzzle training, less interesting for the chaos.
FrogScore · FroGames editorial rating · first reading: based on rules and official presentation, updated with first playsWhat's in the expansion
Four game-changing elements
Mouse Cards
Tiles you can place in your café or opponents'. They give negative points, take up valuable space, ruin patterns. But some special customers want to see them.
Special Customers
New customer cards that require mice next to cats or furniture to be satisfied. They pay well, but force you to keep chaos under control instead of eliminating it.
Mouse Objectives
New bonus objectives that reward those who manage to handle mice without being overwhelmed. The balance between order and disorder becomes a strategy in itself.
Expanded Cat Abilities
Some cat cards gain new abilities that interact with mice: moving them, eliminating them, or attracting them to gain resources. The take-that becomes more elaborate.
🎲How to playThe rules in four steps▼
How to play
The flow of each turn
One action at a time, three rounds of 9 turns. Simple, but every choice adds up.
Adopt a cat (costs cookies), buy furniture (costs coins), invite a customer, or take a coin or a cookie. With the expansion, you can also place a mouse card (in your cafe or an opponent's).
Cats, furniture, and mice are non-rotatable polyomino tiles. You place them immediately, you can't move them later. You need to think about the patterns you need for customers, bonus objectives, and now also where the mice end up.
Some cats have take-that abilities: move other players' cats, eliminate mice, place new mice. You can use them to help yourself or to sabotage. The expansion adds new abilities that interact with mice.
Pass to the next player. After 9 turns, the round ends: you earn points from satisfied customers and objectives. Unplaced mice return to the supply. Round 2 begins.
⏱️Your first gameThe chronicle, moment by moment▼
A game in five moments
What happens at the table
Not the rules. The experience.
The first mice on the table
Someone draws the first mouse card. Smiles. Places it in an opponent's cafe. Laughter breaks out, then revenge comes. Within two turns there are mice everywhere and no one knows yet if it's a good or a bad thing.
The customer who wants them
The first special customer arrives: they request a cat, an armchair and a mouse nearby. Those who had placed mice for defense now have them in the wrong place. Those who had avoided them now have to look for them. The table understands that the expansion is not just chaos.
The puzzle gets complicated
Mid-game. Cafes are full, patterns are tight, every tile counts. Someone uses a cat ability to move a mouse and ruin a combo. Someone else places one precisely to unlock a bonus objective. The weight of each decision increases.
The move that makes the difference
A player realizes they can place a mouse in their own cafe to satisfy three customers at once and activate an objective. They do it. The others realize they underestimated the expansion. The game reopens.
The final count
End of the third round. Points are counted: cats, furniture, customers, objectives, mouse penalties. The winner is whoever found the right balance between clean puzzle and controlled chaos. Someone had too many mice, someone else too few. The difference is 3 points.
🐸What to know beforehandThree honest things, from friends▼
What to know beforehand
Three things you need to know
Base game required
Mousing Around is an expansion, not a standalone. You must have Cozy Cat Cafe to play it. There are no complete rules inside here, only the mouse cards and new customers.
Increases interaction (and chaos)
The base game is competitive but fairly peaceful. This expansion introduces more direct take-that: you place mice on others, ruin their patterns, they get revenge. If you prefer pure puzzles without interference, maybe you don't need this.
The learning curve rises
The base game can be learned in 10 minutes. With the expansion, you need to understand when mice are useful and when they are not, which customers to prioritize, how to use the new abilities. The first game will be experimental, the second more fluid.
🏆Victory and defeatWhat the ending rewards▼
How it ends
How to win
After 3 rounds, points are counted. The winner is the one who built the coziest cafe, balancing cats, furniture, satisfied customers, objectives, and mice.
Victory points
- Each satisfied customer gives points based on the difficulty of the requested pattern
- Bonus objectives reward specific combinations (e.g., 5 orange cats, or 3 adjacent armchairs)
- Some cats and furniture give end-game points if certain conditions are met
Penalties and lost points
- Each mouse in your cafe at the end of the game gives negative points (unless required by a customer)
- Empty spaces on the board do not give points (but no penalties either)
- Unsatisfied customers do not give points, and if you paid resources for them, you lost them
Mousing Around transforms a cozy puzzle into a pattern battle where chaos is a resource. If the base game seemed too peaceful to you, this expansion is the next step.
💬Frequently asked questionsQuick answers before checkout▼
Frequently asked questions
FAQ about Cozy Cat Cafe: Mousing Around
Can I play Mousing Around without the base game?
No. Mousing Around is an expansion, not a standalone. You must have Cozy Cat Cafe (base game) to use it. The expansion only adds mouse cards, new customers, and objectives, but does not include boards, base cats, furniture, or complete rules.
Are mice always negative?
It depends. By default, they give negative points at the end of the game. But some special customers in the expansion require mice next to cats or furniture to be satisfied, and they pay well. Also, certain bonus objectives reward those who manage mice without accumulating too many. The trick is to find the balance.
Can I place mice in other players' cafes?
Yes. It's one of the key mechanics of the expansion. When you draw or play a mouse card, you can choose whether to place it in your cafe (if you need it for a special customer) or in an opponent's (to sabotage their patterns or give them penalties). Direct interaction increases a lot compared to the base game.
What mechanics does Cozy Cat Cafe: Mousing Around use?
The expansion maintains the base game's mechanics: tile placement with non-rotatable polyominoes, pattern matching to satisfy customer requirements, resource management (cookies and coins), multi-use cards, and cat ability cards with take-that effects. Mousing Around adds mice as special tiles that give penalties or open up new strategies, and new customers/objectives that require them.
Is the expansion available in Italian?
No, the edition for sale is in English. The game is language-dependent: customer cards and cat abilities have text. A good understanding of English is required to play without slowdowns. No official or verified fan-made Italian translations are known.
The people behind the game
Who invented it, who designed it, who publishes it — and what else they've done.
Cozy Cat Cafe: Mousing Around is the expansion for the tile-placement game by Sam Rostami, published by Polyra Limited. It adds mouse cards, new customers, and objectives to the base game, increasing direct interaction and the level of controlled chaos. For 1-5 players, 30 to 120 minutes, ages 10+, it uses tile placement, pattern matching, and resource management mechanics with non-rotatable polyominoes. The expansion introduces an element of risk: mice give penalties, but some customers require them to be satisfied. Requires the base game to play. Available on FroGames.it.
Cozy Cat Cafe: Mousing Around
Frequently Asked Questions
The answers you're looking for, no beating around the bush.
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