Gamehelponceuponaforest

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.

The game

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

1 Play a card on forest

When a player places one card on his/her forest, she/he must respect the floor to which the card belongs. All the cards are divided into 4 levels:

1. Ground card: Can only be played on the bottom line.
2. 1st level card: Must be played on the second row.
3. 2nd level card: Must be played on the third row.
4. Canopy card : Must be played on the fourth row, i.e. the highest row.

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.

2 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 his/her board, respecting the rules mentioned above for card placement.

3 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.

End of the game and score count

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: semi-cooperative and single-player. These variants have not yet been implemented at this stage.