Theme: Trees and Forests

The Atiwa Range is a region of southeastern Ghana in Africa consisting of steep-sided hills with rather flat summits. A large portion of the range comprises an evergreen forest reserve, which is home to many endangered species. However, logging and hunting for bushmeat, as well as mining for gold and bauxite, are putting the reserve under a lot of pressure.

Meanwhile, in the nearby town of Kibi, the mayor is causing a stir by giving shelter to a large number of fruit bats in his own garden. This man has recognized the great value the animals have in deforested regions of our planet: Fruit bats sleep during the day and take off at sunset in search of food, looking for suitable fruit trees up to sixty miles away. They excrete the seeds of the consumed fruit, disseminating them across large areas as they fly home. A single colony of 150,000 fruit bats can reforest an area of up to two thousand acres a year.

Just like that mayor, in Atiwa, you know that fruit bats — once scorned and hunted as mere fruit thieves — are in fact incredibly useful animals, spreading seeds over large areas of the country. By doing so, they help to reforest fallow land and, in the medium term, improve harvests. This realization has led to a symbiotic co-operation between fruit bats and fruit farmers. The animals are kept as "pets" to increase the size of fruit farms more quickly. Tall trees are left as roosts, providing shelter for them rather than hunting them for their scant meat. However, if you have a lot of fruit bats, you need a lot of space...

In the game, you will develop a small community near the Atiwa Range, creating housing for new families and sharing your newly gained knowledge on the negative effects of mining and the importance that the fruit bats have for the environment. You must acquire new land, manage your animals and resources, and make your community prosper. The player who best balances the needs of their community and the environment wins.

In Woodcraft, you play as forest people running competing workshops in the woods, with you gathering wood and crafting goods for your customers. Along the way, you hire helpers, improve your workshop, and buy different types of wood and other tools to create the best workshop you can.

During the game, players complete their projects with wood (dice) that can be cut down to size, glued back together, and adjusted using dice manipulation to be as efficient as possible with their resources.

Whoever builds the best, most successful workshop wins.

—description from the publisher

In Evergreen, your goal is to build a lush ecosystem by planting seeds, growing trees, and placing other natural elements on your planet, trying to make it the greenest and most fertile of all.

You choose biome cards from a common pool to determine which area of your planet you'll develop in a round. The cards not chosen make those regions more fertile, and thus more valuable. To create a huge forest, you want to grow trees, plant bushes, and place lakes, while using the power of nature to gain extra actions. Ideally you can concentrate your trees in the most fertile areas, but without them overshadowing one another as you also want them to collect as much light as possible.

In Bitoku, the players take on the roles of Bitoku spirits of the forest in their path towards transcendence, with the goal of elevating themselves and becoming the next great spirit of the forest. To do so, they will have the help of the yōkai, the kodamas and the different pilgrims that accompany them on their path. This is a hand-management, engine-building game with multiple paths to victory.

Players will have yōkai represented by the cards that make up their hand, which must be placed in the right places at the right times in order to obtain the maximum benefit from the abilities they offer. Furthermore, during the game players can earn more yōkai cards for their deck, thereby increasing their playing options and achieving a higher score. Each player also has three yōkai guardians (in the form of dice) that they can send to the large regions of the forest on the main board in order to obtain all kinds of new options that they can play during the game. These options can be structures they build in certain areas of the forest, soul crystals that generate resources when certain actions are carried out, and many others as well. The players also have the chance to help the mitamas, lost souls in search of redemption by using the chinkon fireflies.

There is truly a wide range of actions to carry out, and this is without taking into account the personal domain where the players can lay out another layer of additional strategy while managing the pilgrims. Pilgrims are followers of the player who embark upon journeys of contemplation and reflection who then share the experiences and learning they can along the spirit path with the Bitoku.

—description from the publisher

Springtime has come again, and your forest is blooming! However, the magical kodama spirits will only grace the lushest and most beautiful of landscapes. Plant bamboo and flowers to attract friendly pandas and butterflies to beautify your plot of land. Plan carefully to ensure that your two forests can be filled with as many plants and animals as possible in order to please the colorful kodama

In Kodama Forest, everyone works with their neighbors to cover as much of their shared player boards as possible. Every round, each player places one tile on the board to their right and one tile on the board to their left. Forests are penalized for every uncovered dirt section and the game ends when one board has covered all of its “5” and “10” dirt spaces. Players score both of their shared boards, with the lowest combined score determining the winner.

Balancing cooperation and competition is the key to victory.

–description from the publisher