Living Forest

About this board game

Living Forest is a 2021 board game for 1–4 players, with games lasting around 40 minutes. As a nature spirit, you must save the forest and its sacred tree from the flames of Onibi.

Animal guardians gather around the Circle of Spirits to help your mission. Each turn begins with a simultaneous push-your-luck phase: draw Guardian Animal cards from your personal stack and reveal them one at a time, building your Animal Guardian Help Line. You may stop whenever you wish, but revealing a third solitary symbol forces you to stop.

Your revealed cards determine both how many actions you can take and the strength of those actions. With fewer than three solitary symbols, after cancellations from gregarious symbols, you can perform two different actions. With three solitary symbols, you can perform only one. The number of matching elements on your guardian cards and Forest individual board sets each action’s strength.

Choose one of three routes to victory:

• Plant 12 different Protective Trees.
• Collect 12 Sacred Flowers to awaken Sanki, the great Guardian of the Forest.
• Extinguish 12 Fires to permanently repel Onibi.

At the end of each turn, Onibi may attack both you and the Sacred Tree. Fires can add Fire Varan cards to your discard stack, while the Guardian Animal cards drawn that turn can add new Fires to the Circle of Spirits. The reserve is then replenished, the Sacred Tree passes clockwise, and your revealed guardians move to your discard stack.

In Living Forest, every draw weighs immediate possibilities against the risk of limiting your actions, while the spreading Fires pressure every nature spirit to act.