In the game, players take turns creating their own land area and placing wildlife on it. You start with three hexagonal habitat tiles (from the five types of habitats in the game) and each round you choose a new habitat tile combined with a wildlife token. Then, you place the tile next to the existing ones and put the animal token on a suitable habitat. Each tile depicts 1–3 animal species from the five in the game, and only one animal can be placed per habitat.
Four tiles are face-up on the table, each randomly paired with an animal token, so you need to make the best use of the available options — unless you spend a nature token, which allows you to freely choose the tile and token you want.
Ideally, you place habitat tiles to create large, continuous areas of the same terrain type, reducing fragmentation and forming natural wildlife corridors. This is important because at the end of the game you score points for the largest continuous area of each habitat type, with bonuses if your area is larger than those of other players. At the same time, you want to place animals in a way that maximizes their points, as the scoring objectives for wildlife are randomly determined by one of four scoring cards for each species. Hawks might want to be isolated from other hawks, foxes may seek a variety of animals around them, and bears may form pairs.
Can you combine all these and achieve the perfect balance?
