Imagine a wonderful wooded world filled with adorable cute little creatures making their life peacefully together. The birds sing sweetly, the squirrels scurry beneath the sun that breaks through the tree branches, wildflowers and leaves decorate the forest floor, and somewhere Robert Frost ponders: “Two roads diverged in Everdell forest, and sorry I had to choose between a peaceful journey amidst beautiful card art and destroying my opponent in a fierce strategic showdown.” Ok, maybe he didn’t say it quite like that, but my ever-so-slightly altered version works pretty well for Everdell!
What is Everdell?
Everdell, designed by James A Wilson and published by Starling Games, is a charming game focused on building the perfect tableau of your woodland city of Critters and Constructions. You’ll collect resources (including some pleasantly squishy berries), place adorable woodland creature workers, and manage your hand of cards with the goal of building the city tableau with the most points before Winter sets in. Lose yourself among the precious art and lore of the woodland creatures of Everdell and don’t forget: just because it’s cute doesn’t mean it’s not cut-throat!
Gameplay
Everdell is played over a series of rounds representing the seasons throughout the year. Starting with Winter, you’ll use two Meeples in whatever shape and color you prefer (I like the little squirrels). You’ll have a hand of cards depicting Critters and Constructions, which will offer certain abilities when played into your city. There’s also a shared “Meadow” of face up cards you can play into your city at any time – preferably right before your opponent would! The beautiful board offers many worker placement spots to gather resources and cards. Some are permanent for use during every game of Everdell and some use cards to keep each game refreshing and exciting. As the game progresses through the seasons from Winter to Fall, you amass more and more workers to use in the upcoming season. Decision-making is challenging as you decide how to spend your turn – do you place a worker on a coveted resource spot that could be claimed by an opponent, send a worker to claim an event worth victory points, or play a card that could give you an advantage for your next turn? Construction cards even offer the chance to play an inhabiting Creature card omitting resource requirements on subsequent turns, so thinking out a few turns in advance can be quite rewarding!
Scoring and Game End
Everdell is played in rounds of each season, from Winter through to the beginning of the following Winter. After these four rounds, it’s time to tally up victory points! Your city can host up to 15 cards, though some have special abilities that curb this limit like the space-sharing Husband and Wife (or if you have the LGBTQ-friendly promo, the Hunter and Gatherer) or the Wanderer who doesn’t take up any space in your city. There’s even a Fool worth negative points that you can play into an opponent’s city to sabotage one of those coveted 15 spaces.
Once each player reaches Winter they add up their victory points from cards in their cities, VP tokens collected throughout the game, Events they hosted, any purple Prosperity points on played cards, and any points collected on the Journey spaces on the board that open only during Autumn and require a certain number of cards be discarded. Unfortunately, resources don’t count at the game’s end, though I always hold onto a spare berry to stress squeeze as needed!
Replayability
Everdell offers a ton of replayability. The base game includes 16 Special Event cards, of which only 4 are used per game. There are 11 Forest cards with unique locations to place into the board’s forest clearings during setup based on player count (3 cards for 2 players, or 4 cards for 3-4 players). The deck of cards itself is a massive 128 Critters and Constructions to explore, and the art on each card just melts my heart.
There are as of the time this review was written five expansions to Everdell. Each expansion adds more charming animal Meeples to choose from, so you can truly have any Meeple you’d like. Each expansion also adds an additional game board to the original Everdell’s board, as well as new rules and fun ways to mix up the game. There are Big Critters with unique powers to pair with your Meeples (no literally, there’s saddles and giant Critter Meeples… have you ever seen a squirrel riding a moose??).Depending on the expansion you can invite a 5th or 6th friend to join you in a woodland party in Everdell, or take on the villainous spider Nightweave in a solo or 2-player coop game to thwart her scheme to take over Everdell with her creepy spiderlings. There’s hours and hours and hours of fun to discover in the Everdell forest.
Game Components
This game is adorable. The card art is precious, the wooden creature Meeples are so cute, and the Ever Tree emerges from the board as a 3D structure that is equally as beautiful and it is functional – it all really helps to immerse you into the world of Everdell. The resources are all really cool and nicely textured to affect each type: wood, stone, resin, and the infamous Everdell berries (squishy, squishy). Everything is incredibly cohesive from the base game to each expansion.
There’s also a Collector’s Edition, or rather several options for those who want premium components. You can start with “just” the Collector’s Edition base game or go all-in on the 20-pound Complete Collection (including all 5 expansions, a wooden Ever Tree, upgraded wooden and metal tokens, stickers for your army of creature Meeples, and a giant storage system). If you plan on playing with all of the expansions at the same time, you will need a very large table to accommodate the completely assembled boards!
We gave in and ordered Everdell Duo (we love playing 2-player games) and decided to upgrade our tree to the wooden one. I am very excited!
Likes & Dislikes
Every time Everdell hits the table I feel incredibly ambivalent: do I bask in the cozy peace of the woodland lore, or do I commit to maximum competitiveness and CRUSH my opponent in a surprisingly insanely strategic game?! Let’s be real, the answer is both! This is easily on my Top 5 Favorite Games, if not Top 3 (I have even carved an Everdell Halloween pumpkin). The theme is so dang adorable, and I just love the squishy little berries and wooden creature Meeples. It really is an immersive experience and I keep coming back for more and more and more.
Every game of Everdell has been different. There are so many cards and milling the deck takes up precious workers, so you have to lean in to your starting hand and just start somewhere before the first season is over. Since each season can be activated whenever a player wants (or sometimes unfortunately has to for lack of any other actions), there’s a big strategic component in timing – play a card too soon and you’ll miss out on premier locations, but gather resources aimlessly and you’ll waste your limited workers. Play a Critter to capitalize on their abilities, but not too soon because the next card you draw could be the Construction that lets you play that Critter for free! Unfortunately, the ability to play so strategically can also be intimidating and lend itself to analysis paralysis for some players. We usually play pretty quickly, but if there’s one or two players that get caught up on their turns thinking for a while it can really drag the game on. There’s also a bit of iconography to learn and a fair amount of reading depending on which cards you’re playing, so the first play can be tough.
The Everdell empire does lend itself to mixing it up for different audiences. If you’re seeking more and more there’s plenty of expansions to choose from. If you want a simpler experience for younger players or adults just getting into the hobby, there’s My Lil Everdell and don’t worry, it has squishy berries too! Lastly, 2025 brings us Everdell Duo, a stand-alone game for 2 players to face off in a head-to-head competition or join forces and try out a cooperative campaign together. I love that there seems to be an Everdell for everyone.
Conclusion
Do I really need to keep looking up synonyms for cute and adorable?? If you’re looking for a game that will let you put your strategic mind to the test or just enjoy the journey and play some cute cards with friends, this is it. The production of the game is spot-on, the theme is immersive, and there’s tons of material to keep me coming back for more. I’ve played with 2 and 4 players, though I will say the Meadow component of the base game works much better with the higher player counts at the expense of more downtime between your turns. That’s ok though, just keep a spare berry handy and enjoy the art as your city evolves! Welcome to Everdell!
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