Originally hitting shelves back in 2018, Everdell immediately captured the attention and imagination of the boardgaming masses with its adorable aesthetic and enjoyable gameplay. Five years on and Everdell has become a tabletop goliath, with five expansions, numerous add-ons and upgrades, a spinoff game and a complete collection that weighs more than the table you would play it on. With all of these additional bells and whistles present, it’s important to take a minute to look back and determine whether or not the base experience still lives up to those initial impressions.
Designed by James A. Wilson and published by Starling Games, Everdell is a one-to-four player worker placement game that sees each player gathering resources to build their own town and fill it with adorable little critter occupants. Choosing to play as hedgehogs, mice, squirrels or turtles, players take a single action per turn, by either placing a meeple (worker) on a location and collecting the reward, using collected resources to play a card into their town, or preparing for season.
At the beginning of the game, each player will have two meeples at their disposal. The game board is filled with locations that offer rewards when visited by a worker, such as resources, victory points and opportunities to draw cards. There are two types of locations: exclusive and shared. Shared locations are open for business and can be visited by any number of players, while the exclusive locations can only ever be visited by one player at a time and often have more sought after rewards. This incentivises you to plan ahead, because what if the next player moves into that exclusive location before you do? But you know they’re trying to collect berries, so maybe you’re safe to push that back until next turn and play a card this turn instead. It’s a devilishly simple mechanic, but it creates a wonderful sense of tension around the table.
Everdell’s beautiful components always manage to turn heads
Eight Basic Locations in the middle of the board reward players with resources (twigs, resin, pebbles and berries), while the four Forest Locations on the left and right-hand sides of the board offer more lucrative rewards and are randomised at the beginning of the game. Lastly, there are Event locations that don’t offer immediate rewards, but net you victory points if the conditions on the cards are met. The basic Events, found at the bottom of the Evertree, call for a specific number of the same critters or buildings to be present in your town, while the special Events ask you to collect specific critters and buildings before you can reap the rewards. These little cards are found on the second level of the Evertree, but more on that in a minute. Visiting Events is a good thing in the long run, but you only have a few workers to place at any given time, so balancing where to send them can be stressful, in a good way.
Placing workers and collecting resources is all in service of being able to play cards, each of which features an ability and a victory point value. Cards can be played from either your hand, or from a communal line-up of eight cards in the centre of the board known as the Meadow. There are two types of cards in the game: Critters and Constructions. Construction cards, which often require resin, twigs and/or pebbles to play, allow you to play a matching Critter, depicted on the card, without paying its cost on another turn. For instance, the University card is paired with the Doctor Critter, so you could play the Doctor into your town without paying for them on a subsequent turn. This doesn’t work in the reverse order though, so it’s always worth checking your Constructions before making any rash plays with your Critter cards.
Each card also comes with an ability that fits into one of five types: Traveller, Production, Destination, Governance and Prosperity. The Traveller cards grant you an immediate bonus when played, the Destination cards act as a location that can be visited, Governance cards activate when you complete the action listed, and Prosperity cards give you a particular bonus at the end of the game. The last card type, Production, only activates when you prepare for season.
Your town will start off small, but it should be a haven for woodland creatures by the end of the game
A single game is played across four seasons, with the beginning of each rewarding you with more workers and an additional bonus. Once you have placed all of your available workers and played all the cards that your resources allow, it’s time for the ominous-sounding ‘prepare for season.’ When you do this, you recall all of your workers that you previously placed, along with the newly acquired ones from the top of the Evertree, and activate your Season bonus. Moving from Spring into Summer and then finally into Autumn, your first season bonus will activate all Production cards in your town, the second will allow you to draw two cards from the Meadow, and the final will again activate your hard-working Production Critters and Constructions.
Importantly, players can and will move at different paces, meaning that they’ll prepare for season at different times. Drawing out your seasons and holding out for as long as you can will often mean you’ll have free rein to do what you please towards the end of the game as other players finish up, but those same players will gain access to their additional workers earlier than you and will be gaining resources at a faster rate, so there’s plenty to consider.
While your aspirations might be grand, your town needs to stay modest. Every player is saddled with a 15-card maximum, forcing you to think a few moves ahead and not just open your gates to every toad, beaver and lizard that walks by. Certain cards are also Unique, meaning that you can only have one copy of each in your town.
Ignoring the events is an easy way to wind up coming last
Once each player has prepared for season for the fourth time, the game comes to an end, everyone totals their victory points and the player with the highest score is not only the winner, but can label themselves as the best town planner. Generally, a three-to-four player game will run for roughly an hour, while a two-player game can be smashed out in about 45 minutes. The solo variant plays out in a similar fashion, with the player collecting resources and playing cards, but doing so opposite a rotten rat king that plays cards from the Meadow at the whim of a die roll. You’re mainly playing your own game, even when at the table with three friends, so it’s a solo mode that actually makes a lot of sense.
It’s impossible to talk about Everdell without spending some time gushing about the components. The whimsical setting is fully realised with the gorgeous art found on every single card, depicting cute woodland critters who all have their own little occupation. There’s a warm charm to Everdell that can’t be overstated, and that is elevated (quite literally) by the most noteworthy component of all: the Evertree. A constructed tree that towers over the rest of the oval-shaped board, this beautiful game piece could easily be removed, as it mainly acts as a spot to place meeples and cards, but it’s a novelty that I’m more than happy with. All these years on and I still regard Everdell as one of the prettiest games that I’ve ever played, with a table presence that can’t be denied.
Final Thoughts
I don’t know what to say about Everdell that hasn’t already been echoed by most of us in the hobby. The warm and welcoming theme is perfectly portrayed by stunning art and adorable components that will undoubtedly turn the heads of those who haven’t played it. Worker placement is a mechanic that’s found throughout the medium, but Everdell’s approachable version is simple enough to coax in newcomers but deep enough to keep you thinking and strategising. I started this review asking if the foundations of this now massive game still hold up today, and I can safely and happily say that it does that and much, much more.
Review copy supplied by the publisher
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