Once Upon a Forest

• The aim of the game is to develop your forest to make it the largest, the most balanced and the least degraded.

Game play

• Each player begins by drawing cards from among 5 piles until they have 3 cards in their hand.
• Once this initial step is completed, players will be able to start developing their forest.
• Each in turn, the players will:
  1. Play a card on their forest
  2. Give a card to another player
  3. Draw cards

Play a card on forest

• When a player places one card on their forest, they must respect the floor to which the card belongs.
• All the cards are divided into 4 levels.
• A second rule to respect when playing a card from your hand on your forest is that you can only start a new tree (a new column of 4 cards) if the preceding column is complete.
• So you will have to complete a first tree before you can start a second, and so on.
• However, there is no obligation to build a tree from the bottom to the top, you can place elements of a tree in any order you want.
• It is allowed to cover an already constructed cell, in order to replace its content.

Give a card to another player

• The second step of a game turn is to give one of your remaining cards to another player.
• The player you have designated receives your card and must immediately place it on their board, respecting the rules mentioned above for card placement.

Draw cards

• At the end of your turn, you must draw two cards in order to complete your hand (3 cards in hand).
• There are 5 piles of cards, face down. But, the face down of the cards indicates the floor to which the card belongs.

Game End & Scoring

• A game ends when all the cards have been drawn and placed on the player boards.
• We then proceed to count the points:
  • +3 points per completed tree in a forest
  • -1 point per tree started but not completed
  • -1 point per chainsaw (degraded forest)
  • +1 point per species of animal if the number of them is equal to the number of completed trees.
• Animals on your cards can earn you points only if they are in balance. That is, if the population of a species equals the number of trees completed in your forest.
• An incomplete tree at the end of the game does not count towards the chainsaw and animal species count. It only makes you lose 1 point.

Game variants

• There are two variations for this game:
  1. Semi-cooperative
  2. Single-player
• These variants have not yet been implemented at this stage.