Before this one, I’ve never played the original Forest Shuffle from 2023 which was at this point already within top 200 games on BGG. And at the time of this writing, the publisher already released the 3rd title.
From what I understand, these 3 games have almost identical gameplay with some new twists here and there. Apparently, you cannot mix and match them because they use different back of the cards. It seems, each also has their own sets of expansions.
Forest Shuffle is a game about building ecosystem of your forest. You first need to have a tree or terrain cards. From there, you can add either animals or plants around them. Every species you add to your forest might give you points at the end with possible extra requirements you need to meet. Some need more unique species of the same type while others need to work with different species.
Title: Forest Shuffle: Dartmoor
Year Released: 2025
Designer: Kosch
Publisher: Lookout Games
Artist: Toni Llobet and Judit Piella
Genre: Nature, Multi-use Card, Animals, Hand Management, Official Solo Mode, Additional Component Required for Solo Play, Competitive Game, 2-4 Players
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Overview
Generally, in Forest Shuffle, players are building the ecosystem of their Forest. First, you have to play Tree cards. Each tree card has 4 empty spaces for other species, one at the top, one at the bottom, then one on each side.
Then you have these species cards where each card is split into two halves, either top and bottom or left and right. What you are going to do then, you have to choose which of 2 halves you want to pick and slip the other half below one of your tree cards so only the chose half is visible. So, these are multi-use cards.
Each of those halves has their own scoring conditions, effects, either instant or on-going plus for some, bonus if you meet the requirement. Only the visible side of the played cards matters. The scoring may refer to other species that you played in your forest even if on different trees.
Like get more points for more unique birds or dragonflies. But then when you play those species, you also get more scoring conditions. With that idea, the game is about creating synergy.
You just keep doing that until you trigger the end of the game. Playing tree and then add other species around them through hand management mechanism. You pick cards and then you play them.
The challenge is that to play a card, each card has its own cost. To pay the cost, you need to discard the other cards in your hand. So, you also want to get cards you don’t really need or you might have to lose the other cards that might work in your synergy.
When you discard a card, you actually put them back to the market. So, you can still actually take them back. Unless, of course, the other players also want that card so the game encourages you to pay attention to your opponent’s progress. Make sure that you don’t really give them what they want.
The market itself also has a limit. When it is more than the capacity, you then have to remove them from the market. In that case, you no longer have access to those cards.
After you play a card, most of the time, there is an effect you can resolve. Like it allows you to draw a card right away so you can take back the card you use to pay the cost earlier as example. Some allow you to take an entire action so you can either draw 2 cards or just play another card. Others even allow you to play a species card directly from your hand or the market, this even includes cards you just discarded. So, there is a potential for combo there.
Bonuses, in general, are effects that you can trigger if you pay the cost with specific color. Let’s say, the card you want to play and has this bonus effect has the color of blue. You then need to discard other blue cards to pay the cost in order to trigger the bonus. So, you may not care about the main part of the card but you can use the color for this purpose.
After you get your engine and combo running, the next thing to do is to trigger the end of the game, by depleting the main deck. There are a couple of cards where the effect will draw a number of cards from the top of the deck and you put them to your Cave card. At the end of the game, these cards in the cave is worth 1 point each.
Then you calculate your score from cards in cave, from every species played and from either tree cards played. Whoever score the most points wins.
This Dartmoor version introduces Terrains which works similarly to tree but in horizontal cards. They also have their own scoring.
The difference is, instead of 4 spaces one on each side, you can play two above and two below the Terrain card. Some species cards in this version can only be played on Terrain but not Tree or shrubs.
In addition to that, every card from the main deck can also become universal Terrain. However, only through the effect of some cards players can choose to do so.
Forest Shuffle: Dartmoor can be played for 2 to 5 players. The publisher already released a solo mode that requires a deck of PNP cards for the solo opponent.
Session Reports
July 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and Tumblr.
This was my first time playing. Got 2 sessions, 2-handed. I think in the first one, I forgot about adding cards to the clearing after playing a tree card. But I realized midway and I just removed a number of cards based on the played tree cards straight to discard pile.
The 2nd play took 104 minutes or almost 2 hours. Of course, this was mainly because I played 2 sides. Maybe if played with other players, while definitely faster, it can still take a while. Maybe an hour or more. On the other hand, it can get faster as you get used to certain cards and strategy the more you play.
It can also take a lot of table space. You can just play a lot of terrains and of course some trees just because you get scoring condition to get points for every of them. The downside of that is, you might actually forgot about which card you played and where and which to finish. Some of them can give higher score only if you fill the 4 spaces completely. Others can give you points if you have the minimum. Maybe the terrain or the tree is filled but then the species require you to hit that minimum and you just kind of forget because you are focusing on filling the next card.
At first, you can just keep drawing cards until the hand limit. That way, you have enough cards to pay the cost and you can play which to play first, which to discard and retrieve if possible. It can definitely get to some AP moment because you think, you can score well everything to the point where you cannot decide which to use to pay the cost.
Ideally, it seems you need to get a bit of engine that allows you to keep drawing right after playing certain type. Especially if there is no good card in the clearing. Get the cards into your hand so that you have the control whether to play or discard. This is important considering you might be competing for the same thing as the other players.
Of course, there is still a chance for randomness. Like you just keep getting cards you don’t need while the other players keep getting a good one. From what I’ve seen so far, there is no effect that steal or negatively affect the other players. No positive interaction either.
There will be moment when you can trigger the bonus but nothing to resolve like when the clearing is empty. Do you then wait or just play without the bonus?
Then there is also cards with the effect that can get stronger the more you have certain types in your forest. For these, you want to hold them a bit and played them later. But then, it takes your hand limit.
I think it can really feel repetitive. While there is a potential of combo and extra actions, you are still doing just those 2 actions. There is also no limit of what you can play. You can just keep adding terrain even if it is not always a good strategy. I don’t feel like the game has a big arc as reminder. Or something like Break phase in Ark Nova to stop you from just repeating things. While you might say that players have to self-control but maybe the randomness doesn’t help.
Regarding the art and when you need to play unique animal of one type, I kind of wish that the animal can look a bit different. For some animals like bats or dragonfly, I have to check the name instead of looking at the art to make sure they are different.
I guess my biggest disappointment from this game is that, apparently, there is already a claim of best strategy which is tested by a lot of people who played this a lot digitally. While I didn’t check the overall strategy but from a bit of reasoning, it resonates with what I’ve seen from my play. So, if you don’t follow this approach, you may not have a chance against players that do.
I’m so glad that the solo mode introduces objectives that you can add to your play. While I haven’t tried it yet but it seems it can force people not to follow that strategy. One last complaint. I don’t understand why the publisher doesn’t include the Appendix that explains every card along with the game.
As for how the session went. In the 2nd play, the 2nd player won with 169 and 1st player got 167 so it was pretty close. First player had 8 terrains and 2 tree/shrubs. They tried to have unique birds but then pivoted to dragonflies.
2nd player had 6 terrains and 4 tree/shrubs. They tried the dragonflies, followed by bats and some plants. I think their biggest score came from cards in cave after taking advantage of Shrew + bugs and Beaver. 2nd player actually had better score during the first game with 197 by getting even more dragonflies and also with Shrew and Beaver.
So, overall, from my first 2 plays, I enjoyed my experience. Not perfect but I’m looking forward to trying the solo mode challenge. I like the game but I don’t think I like it enough to get all 3 versions.
More unboxing pictures of Forest Shuffle: Dartmoor on my IG.