First, let me tell you how I played this game wrong. The first time I played Forest Shuffle, I thought animals had to be put on trees matching the tag in their corner. This lead me to be frustrated for the entire game that I couldn’t find the right trees to match my animals and really soured my experience. Thankfully, I was wrong.
In Forest Shuffle, designed by Kosch, with art by Toni Llobet and Judit Piella, and published by Lookout Games in 2023, players are competing to gather the most valuable trees and attract the best fauna to those trees, creating a mutually beneficial point generating engine.
On a turn, players can either draw two cards, or, play a card from their hand. Each card is either a beautifully illustrated tree, or, the card will be split down the middle, representing a pair of animals. The trees get placed in front of you, while the animals need to be attached to one of the four sides of the tree card, covering up one of the two animals on the card. Each of these cards have a cost, and many of the cards boast a bonus that you earn if you pay for that card with cards of the same suit. After you’ve taken your turn, the next player goes, and around and around the game plays until 3 winter cards that are shuffled into the bottom third of the deck are drawn, and trigger the end game.
Perhaps you can see why my rules gaff would create such an unnecessary restriction, and would make me sour on the game. After all, it’s the restrictions that make me dislike many other tableau building games such as Ark Nova and Terraforming Mars. Instead, Forest Shuffle is a pretty forgiving game. Sure, there’s 8 tree varieties, sometimes getting two of the correct ones into your hand to trigger a bonus can be a challenge, but it’s rarely a real issue. Instead, the challenge in Forest Shuffle comes in the form of the animals, and the ways they score off each other. Bats score 5 points if you have 3 of them, foxes score 2 points per rabbit, the rabbits score 1 point per rabbit you have in your habitat. Some trees give points based on how many creatures are attached to that tree, while others give points based on having the most of that variety in your forest. With a thick deck of cards, there’s a ton of variety in the scoring, and almost anything you do will earn you points in the end. But will they earn you enough? That’s the real question.
Now, I love multi-use cards. Not only does each animal card have two different animals on it, but much like other card based tableau builders (Race for the Galaxy and San Juan come to mind), the cards in your hand are also the resource you need to discard to play other cards. Unlike those other two games, however, the cards are discarded face up to a central board, where other players can freely draw them into their hand. In a 2 player game, when you can keep tabs on what your opponent is building towards, this does create some delicious tension. If they’re obviously building towards a massive hedgehog dynasty, the last thing you want to do is, just, hand them more hedgehogs. But if neither of the animals on that card are useful to you, now it’s just a dead card in your hand. Can’t be used to build something else, it just sits there.
Outside of hate drafting cards away from your opponent, there is a single other point of interaction. One of the trees gives you points if you have the most trees of that variety in your forest. Beyond that, Forest Shuffle is truely solitare. Not a bad thing if you and your partners like to build your own little happy forests and not need to worry about some psycho chopping down all your hard work. But if you’re looking for a dynamic and exciting game, Forest Shuffle is going to leave you disappointed.
On one hand, I want to say Forest Shuffle is a great game to draw players into board game hobby. With easy to understand turns and delightfully cute artwork, it’s certainly an attractive option. But because every card has 2 options, the decision paralysis of what cards to play from your hand, and which cards to take from the centre can grind this game to a halt if players struggle to keep 20 different card effects in their head. It can be jarring when players sit down to a cozy game with cute animals, and get hit over the head with point optimizations and information overload.
There is a lot of luck in Forest Shuffle, mostly in that you manage to draw the cards that work with your strategy. Many of the cards reference other, specific cards. Such as foxes that give points on how many rabbits you have, or the boars that give points only if you find one of the three squeakers in the game. When you can build a engine that really works, like the deer and wolves, or the ferns that give 6 points per lizard, it feels great. Beyond that, Forest Shuffle feels like you’re shuffling through a pile of trash, hoping to stumble upon the golden nuggets before your opponents do.
The real downside, is that Forest Shuffle sits in a crowded genre. For tableau building games, I’ve already mentioned Race for the Galaxy, and San Juan. There’s also Innovation, Mottainai, and Res Arcana to consider. If you really want a forest or nature theme, Arboretum, Ark Nova, and Earth are all strong contenders, not even to mention Wingspan. Although perhaps I’m being a little unfair with some of these recommendations. Forest Shuffle is not an engine building game, so to compare it to engine building games is like trying to race a bicycle against a motorcycle. One just has an innate excitement, while the other, is great for a sunday ride, but it isn’t going to turn any heads.
