I increasingly own more and more games about finding homes for cute animals. Everdell was one of my first if it was less realistic and more Redwall. Cascadia and Harmonies both were fun puzzles about appropriate habit development. Last month’s Ark Nova is also mostly about building a zoo and filling it with marketable critters. Forest Shuffle stands out in a handful of ways, from its quiet charm to the rhythm of play. Let’s set off on our arboreal adventure.
In Forest Shuffle players will take turns either drawing cards or playing cards out of their hands. First they’ll need to play trees into their tableau and then they’ll need to play animals and underbrush into those trees. Everything sprouts points and depending on what you’ve played and where you can end the game with a massive ecosystem of points.
Turns are very simple as you alternate between either drawing or playing. The cost to play cards (trees, animals, what have you) are the cards from your hands which get placed in a communal area in the middle of the play area. When you draw cards, you can draw unseen from the deck or you can draw from this communal area. This means that it’s very likely you’ll discard one card on a turn and then draw that card back a few turns later. The trick is to not give up cards your rival foresters want. If there are every ten or more cards in the communal area then all the cards get discarded. Cards will also sometimes have a bonus which you can trigger by paying only with cards that have a matching symbol. The symbols are only used for this and for scoring. Even if an animal has an oak or sycamore symbol it can be played to any tree.
At first you start with a blank canvass and will need to plant trees. There are eight varieties and each one scores differently and comes with different abilities. Some trees are worth a set amount per tree, some reward you by planting more of their own kind, others want varieties of trees in their forest, and so on. A few trees score based on how many you have compared to other players so keep an eye out on how their forest is growing. Trees start empty and can hold four (or more) cards. If you need a free generic tree, you can flip any card over and play it with its back up.
The critters and undergrowth are the real heart of the game and the different strategies and synergies they’ll offer will direct much of your strategy. Every non-tree card is split in half either left-right or top-down and when you play them you have to make the decision of which you’ll play and which you’ll hide under the tree card. Collecting sets of butterflies or stockpiling rabbits can be just as profitable as filling your woods with foxes and deer. Mushrooms often don’t offer up points but can supercharge your engine by letting you draw or play extra cards.
The game ends when you draw the third winter card that was randomly shuffled in at the start of the game, giving you an impending sense of finality with every winter card drawn without ever making it known exactly when the game will end. During scoring, you’ll score your trees, your left-right cards, and then your top-down cards. One last little sneaky scoring area is your cave which bears and raccoons allow you to stash cards in and score at the end of the game. Points can crank up incredibly high as you find all sorts of hidden nooks and crannies where points have been flourishing. Each forest always looks very different and the end-game is a fun surprise as you look over and see just what your fellow players have been up to while you’ve been working.
Forest Shuffle feels very gentle and pleasant as you set up your trees and start sliding different life into them watching them come to life. Cards have continuous impact throughout the game so everything always feels very alive and interactive rather than just being played, scored, and forgotten about. You are constructing a living ecosystem and paying attention to how its growing can be very rewarding. I thoroughly enjoy the quick decisions and ease of play this game offers. The comunal area is particularly engaging as giving up cards doesn’t feel as wasteful as just dumping them in a discard pile never to be seen again. Maybe you’ll recycle that butterfly back into your forest. Maybe one of your rivals will scoop up that Linden you’re thinking of paying to get the goshawk you’ve been prepping to feed a bunch of birds for several turns now. Every decision feels meaningful and long-lived while seldom feeling like you’ve screwed yourself over. I highly recommend it.