Savernake Forest

About this board game

Savernake Forest is a 2–4-player board game with an approximately 40-minute play time, in which players build their own forest sections and help animals gather food for winter.

Each player develops a forest using two decks of square cards: one features animals and the other shows forest paths filled with food. Every animal has particular food preferences and a storage capacity, so the key to a high score is arranging each path so its resident animal can collect the foods it likes best.

During setup, three road cards and one animal card are placed where everyone can see them. On each turn, players choose one available card and add it to their forest. Cards must be adjacent, the forest cannot extend beyond a 4×4 grid, and there can never be two animals on the same path. The game ends when every player has completed a 16-card forest.

• Animal variety: Up to 23 different types of animals can live in the forest, including foxes, hedgehogs, beavers, owls, rabbits, woodpeckers, and wild cats.
• Helpful wildlife: Roosters help determine who chooses first next turn, armadillos provide burrow tokens that increase storage capacity, goats offer water drop tokens that increase a food’s value, and rabbits help attract new animals.
• Advanced challenge: A two-player variant adds rule changes that increase the difficulty.

With its combination of spatial planning, food matching, and shared card choices, Savernake Forest offers approachable strategy for family and friends. Its dreamy autumn artwork and lively woodland cast invite players to create an efficient habitat while preparing every animal for the cold winter ahead.