In the local forest, life thrives: animals dart across clearings in search of edible plants and insects. Some prefer hiding in the treetops, while others favor the lush undergrowth, feeling at home only under the canopy’s cover.

About the Board Game Forest Shuffle

Your task is to craft an ecologically balanced habitat for the forest’s flora and fauna. By planting trees, you’ll foster thriving conditions for diverse animals, plants, and fungi. But to rack up the most points, you’ll need to cater to their preferences: some animals need kin nearby, while others require specific shelters or food sources.

Gameplay

At the game’s start, each player holds six cards depicting various tree types or forest dwellers—plants, fungi, and animals. Creature cards are split into two sections, either vertically or horizontally, with different forest inhabitants on each side.

On your turn, you can draw two new cards into your hand—either random ones from the deck or those laid out in the open clearing. Alternatively, play a card from your hand by paying its cost. Each card’s price is marked in its top-left corner—that’s how many cards you must discard from your hand to the clearing to plant a tree or settle a creature in your forest.

Trees form the forest’s foundation, so all creatures settle around them. When playing an animal or plant card, choose the side you want, sliding the other under a tree in your forest so only your chosen inhabitant remains visible. Up to four creatures can surround a single tree—above, below, left, and right of the card.

As an option, play any card face-down as a sapling. It costs nothing, can host creatures like any tree, but belongs to no specific tree type.

When you play a card, you may trigger its listed effect or earn a bonus if you paid its cost with cards of the same type (color). These can let you draw extra cards, place them for free, take additional turns, or—naturally—score victory points for combo-building.

During setup, three winter cards are shuffled into the deck’s lower half. Once the third winter card is revealed, the game ends immediately, and victory points are tallied. The player with the highest score is declared the winner.

Will your forest host just one or two tree types, populated only by rabbits and sweet songbirds? Or will it teem with a variety of animals and plants? Do predators pro Trinidad and Tobago there, or mushrooms sprout? It’s all up to your choices.