Components: Meeples (Animal) / Animeeples

The Atiwa Range is a region of southeastern Ghana in Africa consisting of steep-sided hills with rather flat summits. A large portion of the range comprises an evergreen forest reserve, which is home to many endangered species. However, logging and hunting for bushmeat, as well as mining for gold and bauxite, are putting the reserve under a lot of pressure.

Meanwhile, in the nearby town of Kibi, the mayor is causing a stir by giving shelter to a large number of fruit bats in his own garden. This man has recognized the great value the animals have in deforested regions of our planet: Fruit bats sleep during the day and take off at sunset in search of food, looking for suitable fruit trees up to sixty miles away. They excrete the seeds of the consumed fruit, disseminating them across large areas as they fly home. A single colony of 150,000 fruit bats can reforest an area of up to two thousand acres a year.

Just like that mayor, in Atiwa, you know that fruit bats — once scorned and hunted as mere fruit thieves — are in fact incredibly useful animals, spreading seeds over large areas of the country. By doing so, they help to reforest fallow land and, in the medium term, improve harvests. This realization has led to a symbiotic co-operation between fruit bats and fruit farmers. The animals are kept as "pets" to increase the size of fruit farms more quickly. Tall trees are left as roosts, providing shelter for them rather than hunting them for their scant meat. However, if you have a lot of fruit bats, you need a lot of space...

In the game, you will develop a small community near the Atiwa Range, creating housing for new families and sharing your newly gained knowledge on the negative effects of mining and the importance that the fruit bats have for the environment. You must acquire new land, manage your animals and resources, and make your community prosper. The player who best balances the needs of their community and the environment wins.

In Yak, the village elder has given you (and others) the task of constructing a great stone tower to guide the merchants and their yaks in the Himalayas. Each turn, a yak pulls its cart into your village. Will you find stones for your tower, or food for your reserves? Or will you need to visit the market to find what you need?

Over the course of the game, each player builds their own stone tower by acquiring stones from visiting merchants. You start the game with one good of each type (meat, milk, bread) and three cards in hand: build, restock, and market. Three or four carts being pulled by yaks start on the game board, with each player having one cart in front of them and each cart containing three stones and some food. Each cart has a restriction on it, e.g., "no bread" because its yak is gluten intolerant.

On a turn, all players choose a card in hand simultaneously and place it face-down. Starting with whoever holds the baby yak token, players then take their turns in order by revealing their card. If you played:

Build: Spend 1-5 food tokens, placing them in the cart in front of you, to buy 1-3 stones from that cart. You must follow the restriction on that cart. (No meat for the vegetarian yak, please!) If you acquire crystal stones, you must pay one extra food for each such stone. Place the stones in your tower, with all stones after your first needing to touch. Your tower is at most five stones wide.

Restock: Take all the food of one type from the cart in front of you and add it to your reserves up to your limit of eight items of food. Then draw a stone from the quarry bag and place it in the cart. (A cart can hold at most four stones.)

Market: Take two food items of your choice from the market, which starts with two foods of each type and which is refilled only when a cart exceeds its nine-food limit during a build action. Then draw three stones from the bag, place one in a cart of your choice, then return the other two to the bag.

Stones come in eight colors, with eight of each in the bag. Eight crystal stones are also in the bag, along with five fog stones. Whenever fog stones are drawn, all players reverse the direction of all the carts, then the active player sets the fog aside and draws replacement stones, with carts reversing again should fog be drawn anew. Once the right number of non-fog stones have been drawn, place the fog stones on the mountain track. This track will be filled twice during the game, after which only a single fog will remain in the bag.

To end a round, return your chosen card to your hand, move the yak carts one space in the direction they face, then pass the baby yak clockwise. Continue playing rounds until someone completes the fourth level of their tower. Complete that round, play one additional round, then score the towers. A crystal stone can be a color of your choice, but each crystal in your tower must be a different color. You score points (1) for each group of two or more stones (e.g., a group of six is worth 16 points), (2) for the number of groups of at least two or more stones, (3) for individual stones (only 1 point each), (4) for triggering the end of the game, and (5) for having the most remaining food.

For an additional challenge, play Yak with the "master builder" variant. Reveal three of the eight objective cards at the start of play. By having the most non-crystal stones of a color or placing them in certain locations in your tower, you score additional points.

Creature Comforts: Kickstarter Edition includes the following items not included in retail version of this game:
- Talents mini expansion
- Dreams Come True mini expansion
- Game Trayz storage solution

Life in the forest is a lot of fun, at least while the sun is shining and the leaves are on the trees. Those days don’t last forever though, and long before the weather starts to change, the wise animals start to harvest for the long cold winter ahead. You will spend many months tucked into your burrow and you want to make it as cozy as possible. A nice bowl of soup, a comfortable rocking chair, and some toys and games will go a long way to make those dark winter days pass by quickly.

In Creature Comforts, you spend the Spring, Summer, and Fall gathering different goods from the forest and spending them to collect items that will make your home more inviting while the world outside is covered in a layer of snow. Each round you send family members out to various locations in an attempt to gain supplies. If they fall short of their goal, they’ll learn a lesson and be better prepared next time. The family that has created the most comfortable den wins the game.

In Dog Lover, you fetch cards, collect bones, and gather food for your lovable dogs. You rescue them from the shelter, train them on new tricks, and cherish their unique traits. The player who takes care of their beloved dogs best will score the most victory points and win!

In more detail, you start the game with a random dog card — which come in small, medium, and big sizes — as well as a random "special trick" card. Shuffle the game cards, then lay out the top nine cards in a 3x3 grid. Next to that, lay out three dog trick cards in an adjacent column and three rescued dogs in another column. The player farthest from the start player places the watch dog token next to one of the rows or columns, then the game is ready to play.

On a turn, choose one of your trick cards, rotating it as you desire, then collect cards from the 3x3 grid that match the pattern on the trick card, e.g., common polyomino shapes. You can take at most one card in the row or column under the protection of the watch dog. You can play and tuck cards both before and after you collect cards from the grid. What do you do with what you collect?

Dog cards sit in front of you immediately. Good boy!
Food cards are exchanged for one of the four types of food.
Adoption cards go in your hand, and you can exchange two for a rescued dog, which comes with a special power or endgame bonus.
Favorite Things cards are dog toys that are more valuable when you collect them in sets.
Training cards can be tucked under a dog for bonus points, or you can exchange several of them to gain a new trick, which gives you more card-grabbing options each turn.
Walk cards are worth bonus points when tucked under a dog.
Bone cards give you a bonus for fed dogs if you collect enough of them.
Trait cards give an ongoing power and an endgame bonus, but you must attach it to a dog the turn you claim it; otherwise, you must usually discard multiple cards.

When the "End Game" card appears in the deck, you complete the round so that each player has the same number of turns, then you tally points. Each dog has a food requirement. If you meet that requirement, the dog and all its traits and tucked cards will be worth points. However, if you don't give the dog the right type and amount of food, you score -2 points for that dog and ignore all tucked cards that would otherwise give you points (Don't let your dogs go hungry!). The player who scores the most points is the ultimate dog lover!

The plateaus are wild, stunningly beautiful, and...full of llamas?!

Being a farmer in Llamaland isn't exactly easy with all the hills and mountains around, but even so, growing potatoes, corn, and cocoa on the slopes of the mountains is what you love. Luckily the llamas are a big help, too!

By fitting your fields in giddy heights, you gain the necessary crops in order to obtain the desired llama cards. These cards not only provide victory points, but also allow you to place a llama on your farm. After about 45 minutes, you will have an impressive crop-growing area in front of you, including your sweet and cuddly llamas.