Habitats Board Game - The Review
What a lovely cosy game! Build your preserve, match animals in the habitats they're comfortable in and score points as you pootle around in your jeeple. Wonderful!
Habitats: Quick Summary
Score:
8/10
Number of Players:
1-5
Time to Play:
20-40 mins
A really nice, cosy game. Very quick to set up and teach, beautiful artwork and fun gameplay. We enjoyed playing this a lot.
What we loved:
Rapid setup and shallow learning curve
A great theme that's appealing to a wide audience
The artwork and production are excellent
The iconography is clear and easy to read
It's not a long game and comes in a sensibly sized box
What could be improved:
The rule book: It's small, which is good, but a few key details are missing and an errata or FAQ section would have been useful.
Draw, Drive and Deal through your Habitat
Habitats is a game about collecting animals and popping them in the environment they love in your preserve. It's as simple as taking a tile, adding it to your reserve and then driving onto the next space. The rules are easy to pick up (mostly, see below), the turns are quick, and the theme and artwork are immersive.
Playing Habitats:
The playing area is divided into two: there is the central "market" and each player's playing area, or their preserve. The aim of the game is to collect animals and score them by building habitats around them that fit their requirements. In the meantime, there are yearly goals you need to achieve to gain bonus points, such as distance from the edge of the preserve.
Players take it in turn to select a tile from the market, drive their vehicle into the space created, place their drawn tile in their preserve adjacent to another tile and then replace the tile in the market. Players can choose tiles that are in front of or to the sides of their vehicles, and then they must drive into the space. This mechanic requires strategy and a little forward planning to make sure you land on the right spaces and collect animals you can score.
Tiles might be animals that need habitats, or flowers for bees and butterflies, or watchtowers to spot your inhabitants. There are also camp tiles and tourists, too. Each tile type scores in a different way and requires different tactics to unlock its points.
This continues at a fair pace until a specified number of turns has been completed, and the "year" has ended. Players then decide who has achieved their goals for that year and gained bonus points before continuing to play. A two-player game lasts 24 turns over three years, with six potential goals to score.
Each time an animal tile has met its scoring requirements, it has a score token placed on it. At the end of the game, each player totals scores from their goals and their preserve tiles, and then the player with the most points is the winner.
It actually takes longer to write about playing the game than learning how to play!
What is Habitats like to play?
This is a fun game, it's precise but simple, and this frees players up to really think about their strategy, how they will score points and what journey they need to make through the market to grab the habitat spaces that will score in their preserve. The goals add complexity, but not so much that they get in the way, and some players will prioritise winning them all as a good way to boost scoring. Others may not; they may see watchtowers, camps and tourists as their route to points.
Win the game your way
Board games will often only have one or maybe two routes to winning the game, but Habitats, for all its simplicity, has several ways. You can build big habitats, or lots of small ones, or add in camps and tourists, or do all of that and go for goals too. You will find your own playing style, and the game mechanics will provide you with the space to execute it. Very clever, and very enjoyable.
Player interactions are limited, however, and it's only when driving around the market that you can either block, steal or react to another person's move. Most of the time, we didn't bother worrying about what our opponent was doing; it was much more fun planning our own routes and pottering around collecting the wide range of different species.
A cosy cuddle of a game
The real heart of this game is the cosy playing experience. This is a warm hug of a game, pootling around in your Jeeple, finding cool animals and putting them in your playing area. All while enjoying a blooming good cup of tea and a chat. Perhaps with some music on in the background. Delightful...
This isn't a nasty, all-out winning game. It doesn't compete as hard as Gwent, for instance, and isn't as points-oriented as Wingspan, even. Instead, it's a quiet, relaxing 30 minutes, then a quick tot up of the scores before refreshing the mug, resetting the game and starting again. This game was made for post-Sunday Roast play time.
Habitats: The pros and cons in detail
What we liked:
This game is very quick to set up and play. Pop all the boards out, set the market to match the right number of players and choose your colour of Jeeple. That's it, you're away. This makes it a great game to take on holiday or down the pub/cafe. It also makes it one of those games that will often appear when you just fancy a game, but not a heavy investment of time and energy. A rainy evening in November after tea.
The theme is lovely too, we're not too sure about calling the area to collect animals "the market", but the animals are super cute, accurate, and the main aim is to preserve them rather than jam them in tight spaces.
In keeping with the theme, everything in the box is produced superbly. The artwork by Dominique Ramsey and Danie Profiri from Allplay is top drawer (just look at the lion on the box, he's spectacular!). The tiles feel good in the hand, and the meeples are great. I'm almost certain they're Land Rovers, but we couldn't rhyme that with meeples, so we settled for Jeeples instead. They're fab. Everything is easy to read, it's easy to tell which habitats will score for each animal, and the scoreboard is very easy to follow, too. All of this serves to let the players focus on playing; it's a very immersive playing experience.
What we would improve:
Overall, this game is very well designed, but the one slight gripe we have is with the rulebook. It's four pages long, with photos to assist the game descriptions. This isn't our criticism; in fact, it's very refreshing. The issue we have is with the space between the rules, the queries and the errata that always occurs when learning a new game. For instance, during the setup phase, each player must choose a Jeeple and an entrance gate. That's the last mention of the gate for the rest of the guide. Placing your first tile must be adjacent to it, but you would only know this from carefully looking at the photos. Each entrance has a different starting habitat in the background, so does this count towards the scores or not? We assumed so, but there was nothing there to help us for definite.
It's a small oversight, but once we got the goals, the animal tiles in play and our habitats were growing around corners, we had more queries. The back page features a good rundown of possible scenarios for scoring, but a link or QR code to an FAQ webpage would have helped lots. As it was, we worked out an answer that suited everyone and carried on with those.
Habitats The Board Game: A Summary
Simple, clever, beautiful and quick to play, Habitats is a really enjoyable game. We strongly recommend adding it to your collection, and we think it will see A LOT of time on your gaming table.
Expansions and Related Games
Expansions
There are no expansions for Habitats currently
Related Games
Allplay are well known for their innovative board game designs and novel themes. If you enjoy Habitats, then you may want to check out Twinkle Twinkle, a game about building constellations. Or if you want another cosy board game, then consider River Valley Glassworks and spent your evening as a woodland creature collecting shiny glass for market.
If you want something more strategic and mentally satisfying then consider Ganz Schon Clever. It doesn't have the visual charm that Habitats does, but it is a satisfying cerebral challenge.
Other Games You May Like
Let's Go To Japan
If the cosy gameplay from Habitats appealed, then take a look at Let's Go To Japan. You will enjoy planning a tour through Kyoto and Tokyo, stopping off at cat cafes, shrines and temples. It has good player interaction compared to Habitats, while not being too competitive in nature.
The Habitats Board Game: Frequently Asked Questions
Who designed Habitats?
Habitats was designed by Corne Van Moorsel, he's well known for creating games with tight rulesets that appear simple but have chunky elements to crunch into. Dominique Ramsey and Danie Profiri were the artists behind the beautiful illustrations.
What comes in the Habitats box?
There is a lovely large tile bag, with a cracking WOMAD style design. You will get 15 goal tiles, a score board, 2 year tracks, 5 entrance tiles, a wipe clean marker pen, 5 Jeeples, a turn tracker, 50 score markers and 134 tiles to play in your preserve.
Does Habitats have a solo mode
Yes, the solo mode is good, although a little abandoned in the rulebook. Players get 25 turns in which to create their preserve. There are no year-end goals and the aim is simply to see how high you can push your score to become King of the Jungle. It's a good, fun game even when playing solo, and it's already seen some time on the table in between gaming sessions.
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