Tree of Life Mama’s game of the week is Everdell! This game involves worker placement, card drafting, tableau building and resource management. If you love those mechanisms, you will probably love this game! On top of those mechanisms, you get a forest theme. It has four sets of meeples, which are animals: turtles, squirrels, mice, and hedgehogs. The hedgehogs and squirrels are so cute. The mice and turtles are just normal. Or whatever the word is for not cute but not ugly.

Anyway, here’s why I love the game:

1. It teaches executive control/goal achieving. You are building a city in the forest with critters and buildings. You can have a maximum of 15 cards, which have either a building or a critter on them. You get victory points based on what you have built. Whoever has the most victory points at the end of the game wins.
2. It teaches one to plan ahead with the harvest theme. It has certain cards that you get to “harvest” resources for when you go into spring and fall.
3. It is fun to handle the resources: the transparent plastic resin pieces, the purple berries, the little twigs, and the pebbles. (I just wish the pebbles were not so flat so they looked like real pebbles.)
4. It is so fun and satisfying to link the building with the right animal who lives there, which maximizes your investment. You use the resources to buy the building and then you can place the critter card for free in your city because it naturally goes to that building. For example, the shopkeeper goes with the general store, the chip sweep goes with the resin refinery, the historian goes to the clock tower, the husband and wife mice go with the farm, and the toad barge goes with the barge.
5. It teaches one to manage resources wisely. You will get more points if you really stretch out each season by thinking logically and organizing your turns well. You will want to save the turns that use resources you have in your hand later, whereas it’s best to use your first turns of the season to claim the limited resources on the board (especially the pebbles).
6. So, yeah, it teaches one to think logically.
7. It’s a beautiful, lovely experience. It’s fun to build a resource-generating city and lovely, in the end, to look at the intricate city you built.

If you want a completely immersive, joyful experience, play this game in the forest!

Two of my girlfriends and I did this recently. We went forest bathing with our kids. We had a lovely time! There’s something to be said with surrounding yourself with natural elements, the trees, the sky, the grass, so you can soak it all up. Then playing a game on top of that just filled my soul. I’d been through a very stressful week, so this was a much needed break.

The kids played in the stream while we three moms played the game. It took us four hours to play! That’s because I had to teach them how to play and coach them through the game. Yeah, this is not a game to play when you have just 30 minutes. The kids got bored in the forest before we did with the game. They were forced to go get more creative with the sticks, rocks, dirt, trees and water. One of them finally came and watched us. It’s good for kids to see parents doing things just for enjoyment.

Anyway, I give this game 5 out of 5 stars! It’s perfect for your summer gaming! Go play it in the forest and amplify the forest vibe! It also has some expansions that I look forward to getting, one of which is shown below.

So many games, so little time!

If you want a thorough explanation of the game, watch below. Happy forest gaming!