Nature themed games are huge right now. After the success of a few, Wingspan mainly, the genre has opened up. The idea of taking kind of a cozier theme and putting it into board games is not a bad thing. Nature is a great theme for opening up the board gaming hobby to a lot of people. So let’s look at five nature themed games that I’ve played and would recommend.

Top 5 Nature Themed Games

5. Arboretum

I’m going to start off the list with the meanest of all the nature themed games. And no, it isn’t because your animal might eat my animal because wolves do that to rabbits. Nope, instead it’s all about trees and building out your most beautiful arboretum. To do that you’re trying to create paths of trees that go from a low number to a high number. And the paths need to start and end with the same types of trees.

That doesn’t sound too bad. Where it gets mean is that in order to score your row of trees, you need the highest total of that tree in your hand as well. So not only are you playing them out to get points when you score them, you need to hold them back as well. And if I see you going for maple trees, I can just hold a 5 and a 7 in my hand and probably block you from scoring them.

But the game itself is a lot of fun. It plays fast and the blocking and meanness isn’t really about me doing something mean in the moment. It’s more a cat and mouse game of how much will you hold back in order to be able to score. So I like that tension a lot in the game.

4. Floriferous

Now Floriferous doesn’t have that much tension. And it’s a nature game because it’s about flowers. But I still really love the decision space in this game. It offers just enough choices to make it challenging and not so many that you feel stuck in them.

Floriferous is a game of drafting flowers to score points. You mainly score points for having a lot of a color of flower, or all the colors, you typical set collection type of things. But you aren’t passing around a hand of cards, you’re drafting from an open grid of cards that everyone can see. And you aren’t just drafting flowers, you also draft the point scoring cards you’ll use. So it’s always a tension of, do I take this flower, but if I do, then I won’t get that scoring card, so which is worth more.

And the drafting system works well. Like I said the cards are in a grid. So you can only draft from the column that is coming up. And which row you draft from, that determines turn order. The higher in the column the sooner you’ll be going next round. And sometimes you might have a perfect card in that following column, so you pass on the previous one. It’s a fun twist and challenge.

3. Forest Shuffle

Now we’re going back into the trees with Forest Shuffle. Forest Shuffle is a tableau building game where you’re building out a forest. In this forest you are growing trees and then putting flora and fauna, mainly fauna around it. And each tree has four spots, top, bottom, and left and right sides where you can add in these animal cards but generally one per side.

The game is a nice balance of playing out cards, and discarding other cards from your hand to pay for them. And then collecting back up and repeating that process. It’s a push and pull of how long do you collect cards to maybe get all the ones that you need for better scoring. But at the same time, the other players are now playing out points, so you’re getting behind that way. And when the game is getting close to ending, well, it’s going to end quickly. So how do you squeeze out a few more points?

2. EcoSystem

Next up is another drafting game. And EcoSystem is a more traditional drafting game. In EcoSystem you have a hand of cards that you are picking a card from. And then you build out a four tall by five wide grid of nature. That’s it, it’s not a complex game. You build out your grid over two hands of ten cards, and that’s kind of it.

But EcoSystem for me is a lot of fun because of how everything scores. And everything does score. Deer want to be in separate rows and columns, basically creating their paths. Bears want to be next to bees and trout, trout, obviously want to be in streams. Everything meshes together in a unique way that you are trying to optimize.

EcoSystem is definitely the breeziest game on the list but it’s still a lot of fun. And there is a Savanna and Coral Reef version as well. So if you feel like you’ve played one enough, get another one and keep playing with the same basic system but now different scoring challenges to figure out.

1. Meadow

Finally we have Meadow. Another nature game that can be a bit mean. But this is the most brain burning of all of the games. That is mainly because of the main mechanism of the game. In Meadow you are building out a tableau again in front of you. And everything you play out builds on top of what was there previously. A fox can be played out, but only if it’s on a rabbit, or a bug can be played on a berry. Those sorts of food chain type of things.

That is a challenge figuring out how to build it all up and get to the point scoring cards. But how you get the cards if the bigger and more brain burning part of the challenge. The game gives you a four by four grid of cards to pick from. But you have specific tiles you get to help you select your cards. How do you do that, well, you are placing your tiles around the edge of the board. Each tile has a one through four on it and depending on where you place it, that row or column, that number is the distance you can go.

So it offers a very big challenge in figuring out how you can get all of the pieces you want. You can’t just jump into it, always, and grab your preferred card. Your opponents might block you out from getting another one. I love that tension in the game, but also the puzzle in a lower player count game of how do I get everything I want. Or do I end up being blocked out somewhere.

Final Thoughts

Nature themed games are fun. I know when Wingspan came out a lot of people wondered, why would I want to play a game about birds. But nature themed games, in my opinion, are more welcoming than orcs and monsters in a fantasy themed game. Or going off into space in a sci-fi game. Now, I personally prefer those themes to nature, but I get why others don’t.

What are some of your favorite nature themed games?

Send an Email
Message me on X at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here
Support us on Patreon here