A Beautiful BEGINNER Board Game - Rainforest City Review
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Transcript
Good day, everybody. It's Danny here. I'm from Australia and I'm a board game hobbyist who loves sharing my passion for this hobby with my friends, my family, and of course, you. And today, we're going to talk about a cozy game with a strong theme and message, all set in the nation of Singapore. It is called Rainforest City. Let's get started. Hey Danny, do you think our board game shelf could do with more green? Absolutely.
Have you ever wandered through a rainforest and just stood in awe at how lush and diverse it can be? If humans didn't urbanize the Earth, I guess this is what a vibrant, thriving ecosystem would look like, a visual feast for the eyes. Rainforest City is a card placement game where you are going to be building and expanding three different types of habitats, mangroves, reefs, and forests, and you're going to be establishing the ecosystems that function within them. It is a game about recognizing patterns and laying out a foundation for the future growth and survival of different animal species. What is special about this game is how the terrain cards and wildlife cards connect together. Terrain cards are placed adjacent to other cards. Here, you are aiming to connect similar terrains together, hopefully attracting particular animal species to them.
The wildlife cards are used to lay plant and animal tokens on your terrain. They indicate where the tokens are to be placed. Different species of plants and animals, however, prefer a specific type of habitat, and if they cannot be placed there, they unfortunately die off and are composted, which is bad for your game. The game is like completing two complementary puzzles laid on top of one another. It's like building the layers of a rainforest as you try to ascend to the canopy. Acquiring these cards is also interesting. Each player in the game will play as a fruit. One might choose to be a banana, or maybe a grape. On your turn, you'll rotate this dial, pointing your fruit at the two cards you wish to take. However, everything has a consequence. Whichever position you rotate it to, the other players will be able to acquire one card of their choice depending on where their fruit points to as well. So, it's a merry-go-round of fruit salad as you pick what you want, but also give the other players something, too.
It all sounds a little dizzy, but it ties into the game's philosophy so well. What you take from nature, you must return. The game also comes with objective cards for an advanced game, where you try to satisfy conditions in your tableau. I really adore this Singaporean themed game all the way from the inclusion of specific wildlife found in Singapore, as well as expressing this idea of conservation. I mean, in the game, if you build a home, you'll also lose a forest, and that has such a meaningful effect on you. I really enjoyed the laid puzzle that this game offers. The fact that you're thinking about how you want to expand your terrain using the terrain cards, and then you're trying to take these wildlife cards and place them onto your terrain so that they match. In a way and you're trying to place them in a way so that you don't create too much wastage, which accounts as negative points at the end of the game. That kind of balance of trying to work out your spatial puzzle, and then layer the tokens on top so that you've got a one, a two, and a three, so they connect together in a chain, just really makes for such a thinky experience. And I think it really plays true to the theme of the game really well. It really makes you feel like, "Ooh, you've got this reef, and now you need to be able to have fish in your reef." And then you've got these pink dolphins that are kind of thriving off the fish, which are thriving off the reef itself. This kind of hierarchy and food chain and food pyramid effect is one that I didn't think I would expect when I first approached this game. And
sometimes a game can just simply be pleasant and nice. And even like the fact that this rotating dial mechanism, which always nets you at least one card per turn, regardless of whether it's your turn or not, means that you're always able to do something. And even the consequence of someone else's action as they rotate the dial means that you've got to deal with what is thrown your way. But the thing is, because there are two cards at every location, you will always have some sort of choice about what you require and what you introduce. And that is such a beautiful touch to the game, the fact that you always get something. There's always growth in your tableau. As well as that, you always have some sort of control over your destiny in the game. And whilst this walk-through nature is always really pleasant and really nice, I'm just really impressed with the variety of different ways you can play.
You can play this cooperatively. I love playing this game in solo mode, and the rules are super easy to pick up. So that every time you kind of finish a game, you can just reset the area and play it again. This game brings me immense joy, and I love puzzly based games. I guess one of the downfalls with Rainforest City is that if you don't have a kind of a spatially geared mindset going into this game, or you're not very good with trying to work out spatial patterns, then this game might be a little bit of a struggle for you. But it's easy to get around because you can kind of spend your turn and on other players' turn just reconfiguring and looking at how everything could potentially fit. And in one of the games that I played, um my partner said, "Oh, look, do you know you could put that wildlife card in this spot, and you'll actually be able to satisfy all of those uh wildlife and vegetation conditions?" And I didn't even realize the answer was sitting right in front of me. The game even includes three different type of objective cards, one centered around vegetation, one centered around animals, and the other centered around the terrain types. And this invites for a multi-layered level of strategy, a racing element of trying to complete these objectives first.
Now, the composting mechanic in the game is an interesting one. You're constantly trying to fit all the tokens in your tableau so that you don't have to throw unnecessary animals or plants out because that would be an ultimate waste. It's this kind of puzzle and penalty that kind of weighs heavily on every decision you make. Place a card to net you a couple of extra points when you have to do it at the sacrifice of trashing a few other tokens. Do you feel like that that is going to something that's going to guilt-trip you for the entire game? And as you look at the end game points and look at how many of your tokens do end up in the compost, you think, "Did I really create the best functional ecosystem throughout my game, or could I have done better?" And I love how each habitat in the game has its own little micro food chain. There's the aquatic habitat, which has like reefs and fish. You even got the kingfisher, which sits at the top of the mangrove uh habitat. And you've also got these tree-climbing crabs. But it's the otter that fascinates me the most. And that's because it's a wild It can function in all three of the habitats, giving you extra flexibility. So you might have that mangrove tree and that tree-climbing crab, and you cannot get that kingfisher cuz it simply hasn't appeared. But then the otter appears, and it comes to save the day because it finishes your food chain off giving you those end game victory points that you so desperately need. In considering my final verdict, Rainforest City is a gem of a game that fills in a niche in my puzzly board game
collection that I don't think I have quite yet. I love the laid approach to how your brain actually has to visualize how everything's going to fit together. If I were to give it a score, I would definitely give this game an eight out of 10. It is one that I really, really enjoy and it's one that I can definitely see playing at the beginning of a game night. It just has that right level of depth as well as uh tapping into a theme that I really, really love and enjoy. Now, if you really found this video super helpful or if you know any other cool, unique, cozy, nature-themed games, I'd love to hear all about it. Please write in the comments section below. If you really found this video super intriguing, then please consider giving me a like and subscribing to my channel. I'd truly appreciate it. And if you want to uh have a little bit more direction over where this channel goes, then head over to my Patreon page and have your say over there. Otherwise, this is Danny signing out. Please don't forget to check out my other videos on my channel and I'll see you soon. Goodbye.