🦊 Everdell

⭐ 2/10

Players: 1–4
Play time: 40–80 minutes
Difficulty: Medium
Game type: Worker placement / Engine building / Tableau building

Everdell is a classic euro game about building a woodland city at the foot of the Eternal Tree. Players take on the role of leaders of small animal communities, developing their towns over four seasons: constructing buildings, welcoming new citizens, gathering resources, and completing events.

At its core, Everdell is about planning, patient resource collection, and slowly building an engine that becomes more efficient over time. With each round, your city grows, new abilities appear, and early decisions begin to pay off — or sometimes come back to haunt you.

The theme is warm and storybook-like, while the mechanics remain calm, structured, and orderly. Everdell encourages building something pretty and well-organized rather than competing aggressively with others.

🎯 Goal of the Game

The goal is to build the most developed woodland city — filled with creatures, buildings, and events that bring victory points and harmony under the Eternal Tree.

The game is played across four seasons. At the end, players score points for all cards in their city, special events, and bonuses. The winner is the player who planned best and used their resources most efficiently.

🃏 What does a turn look like?

Each player takes one main action per turn — and this is the heart of Everdell.

You can:

1️⃣ Place a worker
Send one of your workers to a location in the valley to gain resources (twigs, resin, pebbles, berries) or perform special actions like drawing cards or triggering events.

2️⃣ Play a card (optional)
Build your city by playing constructions and creatures. Many cards interact with each other — for example, if you have a Farm, you can play the Wife at a reduced cost. Each card adds new abilities, points, or production effects.

3️⃣ Prepare for the next season
Your workers return to your supply, you gain an additional worker, and in certain seasons you activate green production cards that generate extra resources.

The game lasts four seasons. With each one, you gain more workers and more options — but also face a strict limit of 15 cards in your city, which can become surprisingly tight. At the end, everything you’ve built is scored.

🧩 Why people love this game

🌸 Beautiful production — fairytale illustrations and incredible attention to detail.
🐿️ Charming theme — forest animals, nature, calm vibes.
🎨 Lovely components — tiny berries, cardboard tree, adorable meeples.
🌳 Atmosphere — it feels like stepping into a children’s storybook.

All of this makes Everdell look like the perfect game…
at least on the table.

💀 Why it’s not for everyone (including me)

✋ Low interaction — most players quietly build their own cities.
There is some blocking and competition for events, but it’s subtle and restrained.

🕰️ It can drag — especially when someone takes a long time counting resources and planning the “perfect” move.

🌿 The 15-card city limit can be frustrating.
You have ideas. You have cards. And suddenly the game says: stop.

📖 The game rewards repeated plays.
Knowing the cards and combos is key — and for me, that requires more patience than I’m willing to invest.

☕ My impressions

I know many people absolutely love Everdell — and in theory, it checks all my boxes: cute meeples, adorable berries, gorgeous artwork, and clever card text. But… it didn’t click.

This isn’t a game I want to come back to — not because I lost, but because the constant resource management and limited number of workers frustrated me more than they satisfied me. After a while, the game started to feel a bit dull and low on excitement.

At times, Everdell felt less like a relaxing board game and more like running a tiny, extremely cute company: everything needs to be optimized, counted, planned, and managed. And when I play board games, I’d rather rest than feel like I’m back at work 😉

I also felt that to truly appreciate Everdell, I’d need to play it many times, learn all the cards, and plan the “perfect” city. And honestly… I just don’t feel like trying that hard. 😅

🎯 Final score: 2/10

Beautiful. Polished. Not for me.
A charming game — but one that left me more tired than relaxed.