Rainforest City

The Game

Rainforest City is a game from Singaporean designer Daryl Chow. It is a game about nature and developing habitats. It has an educational element. Players build rich habitats and fill them with plants and animals to score points. They set up food chains. The game is played over a fixed number of rounds. The highest scorer at game end wins. 

These are the tokens in the game. Those numbered 1 are plants. Those numbered 2 are herbivores, and they need to eat plants. They can only survive (i.e. score points) if they are supported by a plant in the same habitat. The tokens numbered 3 are the carnivores, and they in turn need to be supported by herbivores. The background colours represent the terrain types these plants and animals live in - forest, sea or marshland. The otter is a special type of carnivore which can live on any terrain. 

At the start of every turn the centre of the table must be set up like this. There are four sets of two cards each. There are two types of cards - terrain cards and animal cards. Two of the sets will have one card of each type (in the photo above, those two sets on left and right). One set will have two terrain cards (the set at the bottom). One set will have two animal cards (top). The active player may choose any set. To choose a set, he must turn the central dial so that his fruit (every player is assigned one) points at the set he wants. The dial determines which sets the other players get access to. The other players may pick one from the two cards they have access to. 

When claiming a terrain card, you must add it to your territory. Connected squares of the same terrain type in your territory form habitats, and when you do final scoring, it is done separately for each habitat. Terrain cards usually come with some free tokens. 

When claiming an animal card, you don't add it to your territory, but you'll get to place tokens. Tokens must be placed following the pattern shown on the animal card. Also the terrain type must match your territory. If you are unable to place an animal (or plant), there is a penalty. This can be because you don't have the matching terrain, or the position where you are supposed to place a token is already occupied. In this photo above, I was able to place all three tokens. 

Here is how tokens score points. All the number 1 tokens score 1 point by default. These are plants. Each plant supports one herbivore within the same habitat (connected group of same terrain type). If a habitat has two plants and three herbivores, only two of the herbivores will score points, because you don't have enough plants. Similarly, each herbivore supports one carnivore. The 3 points of a carnivore is lucrative, but they are not easy to score. You need to set up the whole food chain. 

Some terrain cards have houses, i.e. human habitat. These are worth 3 points each, so that's attractive. However when you pick a card with a house, it forces you to discard a specific token. Also if you place any token next to the house, you lose 1 point per token. 

I had a large sea habitat (blue), and it had three dolphins. However only one of them scored 3 points, because I only had one fish. So I could only support one dolphin. 

This is used when playing the advanced game. If you fulfil a specific condition, you score bonus points. 

The Play

I played Rainforest City with my old friends when we went on a gathering trip to Ipoh. Chee Seng brought the game. Chee Seng has played many different boardgames, although he's not as crazy as I am about them. Cherng Liang is not really a gamer and doesn't play often. The three of us are at different points on the gamer spectrum. For Chee Seng and I, the game was pretty straight-forward. However Cherng Liang complained why we picked something so complicated to play. However he went on to win the game. So it's not really that complicated. He was just not accustomed to playing games like this. 

We played quite many games during our trip to Ipoh

I would say a big part of Rainforest City is a solo game. Or multiplayer solitaire. You build your own little kingdom and your opponents can't really mess with you. The player interaction in the game comes from how you pick cards when you are the active player. Your choice determines the options available to your opponents. If you think you are going to give options which are too good to them, you can intentional make a suboptimal move for yourself for the sake of not benefiting your opponents too much. We didn't really play that way. We mostly focused on just optimising our own moves. If you want to, you can examine what animals and plants your opponents may want, and avoid giving them what they want.  

In our game, Chee Seng's fruit (i.e. player icon) and mine are on opposite ends of the central dial. That means in the early game when we tended to want two terrain cards on our turns, we were forcing the other to pick from two animal cards. Cherng Liang's fruit was 90 degrees from ours, so on our turns he was able to pick from one terrain card and one animal card. Maybe that's why he eventually won. 

My kingdom towards late game. 

The player icons: rambutan, durian, banana and mangosteen. 

The card backs of the three types of cards form a montage

The Thoughts

Rainforest City is a light to mid weight family game with an educational element. You learn a little about the environment and the ecosystem. The player interaction is low, and you can peacefully develop your own little kingdom. If you are the competitive type, you can still play that way by paying more attention to your opponents' play areas and watching out for what they need. Optimising your play within your play area does give your brain a little jog, but overall I'd say the game is pretty straight-forward. Primary school children will be able to handle it. So this is a good educational tool.