Gamehelpferal

Feral is a two-player abstract strategy board game with no randomness after setup and perfect information. Two mirror-image armies of animals face off across a shared board, each trying to break through to the opponent's beach.

Overview

• 2 players only
• No dice, no cards during play — every game state is fully visible
• Each side controls the same 12 animals (mirrored)
• Goal: get one of your animals onto the opponent's beach and hold it there through the opponent's next turn

Components

• 12 black pieces and 12 white pieces (same 12 animal types per colour)
• 1 double-sided game board
• 1 game overview card (used during setup)

The Board

The board is 6 rows deep on each side, with the outer sand rows serving as each player's beach.

Layout	Columns	Used in
Narrow (beginner side)	4	8-animal game
Wide (full game side)	6	12-animal game

• Row 1 = Black's beach, Row 6 = White's beach; rows 2–5 are grass
• Anything off the edge of the board is water — normal moves never enter it, but actions can push animals there, removing them permanently

Game Sizes

	Beginner	Full game
Animals per player	8	12
Board	Narrow (4 cols)	Wide (6 cols)
Animals used	Bull, Octopus, Crab, Snake, Kangaroo, Gorilla, Bee, Rabbit	All 12
Excluded	Anglerfish, Chameleon, Fox, Lion	— none —

The Lion only appears in the full game, so no Lion win/loss rule applies to the beginner set.

Setup

Both armies end up as exact mirror images of each other.

1. Shuffle the white pieces face down beside the board
2. Flip one white piece and check its background colour on the overview card:
   • Yellow → placed on the player's own beach row
   • Green → placed on the row directly above the player's own beach
   • Split (yellow/green) → alternates depending on how many of that animal have been placed so far
3. Both players place their copy of that animal in the indicated row, in the first empty square from their own left
4. Repeat until every animal is placed; the two middle rows start empty

Turn Structure

• The player who most recently saw a bee goes first
• On your turn, choose two different animals; each one either moves or performs its action, in any order
• On the very first turn of the game, the starting player activates only one animal

Move (any animal): one square forward or sideways into an empty square. No diagonal moves, no moving backward toward your own beach, and never off the board via a move.

Action: each animal has its own unique effect (see below). Actions may usually target either team, with two exceptions — the Chameleon can only target its own team, and the Fox can only target the opposing team.

Removing Animals

There are only two ways an animal leaves the game:

1. An action pushes it into the water (off the edge of the board)
2. The Bee's action removes it directly

Removed animals are gone permanently — there is no capture-by-moving-onto-a-piece in Feral.

The Twelve Animals

Animal	Action
Bee	Removes itself and one adjacent animal from the game (friend or foe)
Rabbit	Hops over an adjacent animal into an empty square beyond it, but never landing closer to its own beach
Gorilla	Moves an animal adjacent to itself into an empty square (or the water) adjacent to itself; the Gorilla does not move
Crab	Moves itself and one adjacent animal one square forward or sideways together, in the same direction
Bull	Pushes an adjacent animal — and the whole line of animals behind it — one square directly away; the Bull itself does not move
Octopus	Pulls a chosen animal (any distance in a straight line) so it, and everything between it and the Octopus, ends up packed against the Octopus
Kangaroo	Jumps exactly two squares forward or sideways into an empty square; may jump twice in one action
Snake	Moves diagonally forward into an empty square; may do so twice in one action
Lion	Steps diagonally forward one square; also carries the instant win/loss rules below (full game only)
Fox	Forces an adjacent enemy animal to move or use its action, under the Fox player's control (that animal cannot be pushed into the water this way)
Anglerfish	Swaps a chosen animal with one of its adjacent animals
Chameleon	Copies the action of an adjacent allied animal (cannot copy the Lion's instant-win ability)

Winning

Beach victory: you win when one of your animals stands on the opponent's beach row and the opponent cannot clear that row on their next full turn. Moving the intruder to a different square on the same beach does not count as clearing it — the whole beach row must be free of enemy animals.

Lion victory (full game only):

• Getting your Lion onto the opponent's beach wins immediately, by any means
• Removing the opponent's Lion wins immediately
• Losing your own Lion loses immediately
• Both of these override a pending beach-loss situation, so a defending player can snatch victory this way on their final turn