Forest Shuffle

Today's review is of the 2023 release, Forest Shuffle. For 2-5 players, it takes 60 minutes.

Overview

You are building a habitat by planting trees and placing animals, plants, and mushrooms [all represented by cards] around them. Each card has characteristics that tells you how it thrives; if you can place your cards wisely, you will earn more points and prevail. Do you have what it takes to produce a balanced ecosystem?

To start, place the game board in the center, deal six cards to each player, and prepare the remaining deck with three winter cards shuffled in as the rules indicate. Play begins and moves clockwise; on your turn, you either draw two cards (from the board or deck) or play one card to your tableau. If you play a card, you must pay its costs by discarding other cards from your hand to the board. If the board ever has ten cards, those cards are discarded.

Generically, cards are trees or animals/plants/mushrooms., and each has attributes that show how it scores points (generally, by the presence of other types of species it likes). Tree cards must be played first. Once you have a tree, you can play the other three card types, each of which have two halves (split horizontally or vertically and representing two different animals/plants/etc.) and are placed around a tree  (top, bottom, left, or right) as permitted by their orientation and your preference. A tree can have no more than four cards around it unless a card indicates otherwise. Over the course of the game, you can play any number of trees, and they needn't be 'full' (have cards on all four sides). Whenever a winter card is revealed, it is set aside and another card is drawn. Once the third winter card is revealed, play immediately stops, points are tallied, and highest total wins!

Example game layout; image from here

Review

This game is highly regarded, and I enjoyed it. It is simple, though it can be overwhelming given the sheer number of options and ways to score points. (It can feel like a 'point salad' game in that respect.) The split cards were an interesting twist leading to meaningful decisions. Player interaction is low: the main way to interact with your opponents is through the cards discarded to the game board (you can help or hurt others based on your choices there). Otherwise, your goal is efficient resource management, wisely balancing your hand size with playing cards and looking for synergies based on your cards. Overall, recommended, especially for fans of comparable games like 7 Wonders (which is more interactive) or Wingspan (which is more complicated).

Rating: B