Explorers of the Woodlands— When the Dice Rule the Forest

⭐ 1/10

Players: 1–4
Play time: approx. 40 min
Difficulty: Medium (luck-heavy co-op)
Type: Cooperative / Adventure /
Dungeon Crawler
Mechanics: cooperative play, tile exploration, dice combat, character progression, fantasy adventure

🍃 What the Forest Hides

The box looked stunning — a lush green forest, adorable animal heroes, and a promise of adventure. “A light forest crawler,” they said. Something between a cooperative Karak and a gentler Gloomhaven. You can play a single scenario or a five-chapter campaign filled with exploration, monsters, and loot. It sounded perfect.After a few sessions, I found only one thing inside: dice that refused to cooperate.

🎯 Goal of the Game

In Mysteries of the Forest, you and your team venture into a mysterious woodland, uncovering new areas, collecting gear, and fighting monsters to eventually defeat the main boss.
You win if you do so before your heroes fall or the threat tracker reaches the end.
It sounds thrilling — but the forest has its own plans.

🛡️ How a Turn Works

Each round has two phases:

1️⃣ Exploration Phase – each player adds a new forest tile, expanding the shared map.
2️⃣ Adventure Phase – roll four dice for your hero and assign them to actions:
 • 1–3 → Move
 • 4 → Focus (gain an orb for later use)
 • 5–6 → Use special ability
 • Any two dice → Summon a Power Die for combat

Sounds simple, right?
And yet, it rarely works as intended. The system limits you so much that every turn feels like choosing what not to do. Roll three 4s and a 6? You can gain an orb and use an ability — but you can’t move or fight. Roll low? You move, but do nothing useful. Want a Power Die? Sacrifice half your turn and watch your plan fall apart. It’s not strategy — it’s a dice lottery in a leafy maze. 🎲🌲

🐗 Fighting Monsters — Or How Not to Throw the Dice in Anger

When your hero steps on a monster tile, combat begins — unless you choose to flee (which rarely helps). You flip the token and reveal your enemy: a ghost, plant, fungus, skeleton, or snake, each with its own stats. Each die represents a single attack. If the monster’s defense is 4, you must roll 4 or higher to deal one hit — and you usually need two successful hits to win.
Sounds easy? Until you roll three twos in a row and take 2 damage instead. SICK. 😅
Enemies poison you, wrap you in vines, or strike back hard. Even in group battles, you don’t feel stronger — just more people rolling badly together.

🦉 Heroes and Powers

This is, without question, the most charming part of the game.
Four animal heroes — an armored beetle, a healing frog, a wolf mage, and a brave bird warrior — each have unique abilities, their own Power Die (blue, purple, green, or orange), and special actions that can be activated during battle or exploration.

🪶 Sha’Vi (wolf mage) can freeze enemies, preventing them from attacking for one turn.
🐸 Xylia (frog) heals herself and allies.
🪲 Klethor (beetle) protects others with his shield and can carry teammates.
🦅 Bethras (bird) removes negative effects and can convert dice into bonus attacks.

A wonderful concept — but due to chaotic rules and heavy randomness, their powers rarely change the flow of the game.

🧩 The Design Problem

The idea? Adorable.
The execution? Hard to defend. Building the forest map is fun, the meeples are cute, and the insert keeps everything neat — but the gameplay is too random, too repetitive, and too slow.

❗ Fights drag on with no tension.
❗ Some hero powers are useless in certain scenarios.
❗ Enemies just stand still, waiting for you to reach them.
❗ Bosses feel anticlimactic and underwhelming.

It’s a game that looks like a fairy tale but plays like an Excel spreadsheet with dice.

💀 Why It’s Not Perfect

❌ Every turn feels like a punishment loop: roll → fail → heal → repeat.
That’s not tension — that’s fatigue.

❌ Even victories feel random. The forest itself seems to yawn.
I play for stories and emotion — not for endless rerolls that end in disappointment.

🌳 The Campaign and Small Consolations

The five-chapter campaign tries to save the experience.
Some missions are actually fun — like defending the Tree of Life in a mini tower defense style scenario. For a brief moment, you can glimpse what this game could have been: dynamic, cooperative, full of excitement.Sadly, the core mechanics never grow enough to let the forest truly come alive.

☕ Impressions

You can play solo — and I did. I read the rulebook several times, trying to make sense of it. It wasn’t the rules that were broken — it was the game itself.

😅 My Lesson from the Woods
In one session, we revealed every single forest tile, and I was still trying to slay a monster that refused to die — rolling my dice with Sha’Vi’s fury. I never rolled high enough.And that’s when I realized: there are no automatic victories here. You plan, cooperate, and… mostly hope for luck.Except I didn’t fall in love with that “charm.”
I gave it away. 🌲

⭐ Final Rating: 1/10
1 point for visuals and atmosphere
– 9 for turning an adventure into pure frustration

Mysteries of the Forest / Explorers of the Woodlands is a forest that looks enchanting from afar — but inside, it’s hollow.

📜 Rulebook: Explorers of the Woodlands – Official English PDF