Game Synopsis

In Reforest, players strive to create a thriving pyramid of Pacific Northwest plant cards over three short rounds. Your cardstock ecosystem will include trees, herbs, ferns, and shrubs - each with their own set of needs, attributes, and abilities. At what elevation will the plant grow best? Does the plant need full sun or can it thrive in the shade? How much energy does the plant need to grow? 

There are three slots for cards at the base of your forest, two in the middle, and one at the top.Your forest, like any forest, will be built with layers of organisms at each level, new plant cards in each slot growing higher and higher over their neighbors. Some plants will die off becoming energy for the next generation, while others will continue to thrive. Every card in your hand could become a vital part of your ecosystem or be the fuel for others to grow. The type and effect of each plant in your forest can create beneficial relationships with others, enhancing your options and increasing your score.

Why We Love Reforest

Reforest is an object lesson in the benefits of biodiversity. You have six slots in your forest representing low, medium, and high elevation. Six spaces for your entire forest might seem limiting at first.

As you seed these levels by planting cards from your hand, spending others as nutrients to do so, you will begin to build upon each of these slots, forming stacks of plant cards- always following one overarching rule: every new plant must be taller than the last. Plants that need sunlight when covered will die and become stored energy that you can spend to grow other nearby organisms. Shade loving plants will continue to thrive and may have attributes that enhance the abilities of nearby trees, shrubs, ferns, or herbs.

While forests take centuries or even millennia to grow, the pace of this game will surprise you. The clock for each round is the draw deck of plant cards. When exhausted, players will compete to attract an animal visitor. Each animal has a set of requirements and the player whose forest best matches those requirements will lure the visitor to come live in their habitat.

The benefit for earning a visitor is twofold. You will gain victory points at the end of the game and you will gain stored energy cards, which you can use to grow new plants in your forest without depleting your hand of cards. The draw deck of plant cards will decrease significantly between rounds, adding pressure and meaning to each decision you make as the game winds to close. 

Just as a game like wingspan brings attention and interest to the amazing depth and diversity of bird life on the planet, reforest celebrates the rich and luscious flora of the Pacific Northwest. Every card is beautifully illustrated and packed with real world information. This level of detail is far from fluff. In fact the scientific data about each plant provides the essential information each player needs in order to make informed decisions in the game.

Biodiversity is at the heart of every decision you make in reforest. You need to think about each plant you grow in relation to the plants that exist around it and create the best system of synergies possible. Some parts of your forest may end up with stacks of many cards whose plants never grow a great height but whose abilities and attributes sync up to create a powerful, albeit short scoring engine. Other slots may have only one or two majestic tall trees, but their growth and potential is enhanced by the plants in slots around them. The game pushes you to see your entire forest as a living breathing organism itself. Each plant shouldn’t be considered in isolation but rather part of the greater whole. Each plant in your forest is a biological cog in a grand botanical engine. 

In this sense, each player in Reforest becomes a mini experiment in evolutionary terms. This is not intelligent design. Context is all in Reforest. Every forest you create over three rounds, will be an amalgamation of choice and chance. The plants available for you to gather and the plants you choose to play will guide you to certain strategies as each turn unfolds. A game can only hint at the staggering array of variety and complexity within even an acre of a real forest. Even when pared down to a simple deck of cards this game invites us to explore the infinite diversity in infinite combinations we can find when we step out into the natural world.

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Congratulations to designer Sebastian Bernie Wong

More information on Reforest at Firestarter Games.

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