In Habitats, you step into the role of a wildlife park builder, designing a beautiful, expansive environment for animals to thrive — all without cages or fences. This tile placement game allows 1-5 players, ages 11 and up, to create their ideal wildlife sanctuary, where each animal has its own specific landscape needs. Whether it’s a zebra that craves vast grasslands with water nearby or a bat that prefers rocks, bush, and water, your challenge is to meet the unique requirements of 68 different animals, each with its own habitat desires.
Each player begins with an entrance tile and a ceramic animal figure (or a wooden ranger meeple in some editions). On your turn, you’ll select a tile from the marketplace, move your figure to an adjacent space, and place a tile in your park, expanding the landscape and accommodating animals. As you build, the placement of one animal tile can help fulfill the habitat needs of other animals, making each turn a strategic puzzle. For example, placing a hippo tile that adds water to your park may satisfy the otter’s need for water, allowing for efficient growth.
As your park expands, you’ll face increasing complexity in meeting the habitat demands of all your animals. Besides managing the animals, you can enhance the profitability of your park by adding features like entrance roads, trek spots, and watchtowers. The game progresses over three seasons, with each season offering 6-9 new tiles to place. Players earn bonus points at the end of each season for meeting that season’s goals, while the final score is based on how well each player has satisfied their animals' needs.
The player with the most points, having built the most successful and harmonious wildlife park, wins the game. Habitats combines strategy, planning, and a love for nature, creating a fun and engaging experience for all players. Whether you're an animal enthusiast or a strategic thinker, this game offers a rewarding challenge for families and adults alike.
15 Goal Tiles
2 Year Tracks
1 Score Board
5 Player Entrance Tiles
1 Dry Erase Marker
5 Player Jeeps
1 Turn Tracker
1 Turn Marker
1 Tile Bag
50 Score Markers
134 Preserve Tiles (76 Animals, 20 Flowers, 12 Gates, 8 Tourists, 8 Watchtowers, 4 Campsites)
Protective Packaging
In Habitats, each player builds a big wildlife park without cages or fences. The animals in your park need their natural habitats: grassland, bush, rocks or lakes. The zebra needs a big area of grass and some water adjacent, for example, while a bat needs rocks and bush and water, a hart needs bush and grass, and a crocodile needs mainly water. There is a snake, baboon, bee, elephant, otter, lizard, turtle, eagle, meerkat, scorpio, hog, catfish, rhino, etc., each with its own landscape requirements — 68 different animals in total.
Each player starts their individual park with an entrance tile, and they are each represented in the marketplace of animal tiles by a ceramic figure (or a wooden ranger meeple in some editions). On a turn, a player takes the tile to their left, right or front; moves their figure to the space just vacated; then draws a tile to place where their figure started the turn.
When adding an animal tile in your park, you add its main landscape — the base space for the animal — to your park, too. While placing this new animal, its own piece of landscape can help to fulfill the requirements of your other animals' requirements, e.g., the water on a hippo tile fulfilling the adjacent otter's need for water. Thus, fulfilling every animal's desire for land becomes a more and more difficult task with each tile you add.
Aside from expanding your park with different landscape types, flora and animals, you can improve its profitability by building extra entrance roads, trek spots, and watchtowers.
Habitats lasts three seasons, with each season giving each player 6-9 new tiles for their parks. Whoever has best met the goal of the season receives bonus points, with a smaller number of points for second and third place. At the end of the game, each player scores for each tile in their park based on whether that tile's requirements are satisfied. Whoever scores the most points wins!