Add to Wishlist

Habitats

29.00€

In stock

Board Game Geek Reviews


  1. 7 out of 10

    A nice spatial puzzle of building a zoo through tile placement with an interesting tile draft mechanic where while you draft from a central grid and you can only get the tiles on the front and either side of your meeple and not the one at your feet. However, if you're at the edge of the tile grid that further limits your options so you want to try and stay near the middle. The animal tiles have a scoring condition based on the other tiles adjacent to it along with a few other tiles that score differently along with some end of round objectives. It's quick to learn and can present some interesting decisions but there are a number of other tile placement games I'd choose over this including Isle of Skye, Barenpark, or Kingdomino.

  2. 7 out of 10

    Initial rating, I need to play this more Easy to explain/play tile laying abstract - but it looks pretty. There's surprising depth here and you do need to look ahead both to what tiles you can take and where you put them (also factoring in the goals you want to score). Pleasantly surprised thought I'd hate it.

  3. 6 out of 10

    Habitats reminded me of a lot of Isle of Skye. I say this because it has variable goals that are scored through the game, you are placing the tiles in your own personal area (rather than shared), and there is an interactive way in which the players receive their tiles (auction in IoS, movement grind in Habitats). Sadly, Habitats didn't really measure up for me. I think this is because the rules are not overly well written (which is a recurring trait I find with cwali games), and there are certain things game exceptions that bothered me that I had to intuit from the scoring example (the insect and flowers, specifically). IoS is cleaner in that regard. I also find the artwork to be of poor quality compared to Isle of Skye, but artwork is very subjective. In a world where Isle of Skye doesn't exist, I would probably call this a great game. As it is, I would always choose IoS over this.

Be the first to review “Habitats”

In Habitats, each player builds a big wildlife park without cages or fences. The animals in your park need their natural habitats: grassland, bush, rocks or lakes. The zebra needs a big area of grass and some water adjacent, for example, while a bat needs rocks and bush and water, a hart needs bush and grass, and a crocodile needs mainly water. There is a snake, baboon, bee, elephant, otter, lizard, turtle, eagle, meerkat, scorpio, hog, catfish, rhino, etc., each with its own landscape requirements — 68 different animals in total.

Each player starts their individual park with an entrance tile, and they are each represented in the marketplace of animal tiles by a ceramic figure (or a wooden ranger meeple in some editions). On a turn, a player takes the tile to their left, right or front; moves their figure to the space just vacated; then draws a tile to place where their figure started the turn.

When adding an animal tile in your park, you add its main landscape — the base space for the animal — to your park, too. While placing this new animal, its own piece of landscape can help to fulfill the requirements of your other animals’ requirements, e.g., the water on a hippo tile fulfilling the adjacent otter’s need for water. Thus, fulfilling every animal’s desire for land becomes a more and more difficult task with each tile you add.

Aside from expanding your park with different landscape types, flora and animals, you can improve its profitability by building extra entrance roads, trek spots, and watchtowers.

Habitats lasts three seasons, with each season giving each player 6-9 new tiles for their parks. Whoever has best met the goal of the season receives bonus points, with a smaller number of points for second and third place. At the end of the game, each player scores for each tile in their park based on whether that tile’s requirements are satisfied. Whoever scores the most points wins!

Ages

10+
Players

2 Players, 3 Players, 4 Players, 5 Players
Play Time

30m – 50m
Designer

Corné van Moorsel
Mechanics

Map Addition, Square Grid, Card Drafting, Grid Movement, Pattern Building, Tile Placement
Theme

Animals, Environmental
Publisher

Cwali, IGAMES
Cart
  • No products in the cart.
Cart - 0.00€
  • 0
  • 1
Skip to content