Koala Rescue Club

• Designer: Phil Walker-Harding
• Publisher: Postmark Games
• Players: 1+
• Time: 20 minutes
• Link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/postmarkgames/koala-rescue-club
• Played with preview PnP copy provided by publisher

Postmark Games has found a nice little niche for itself in publishing little print-and-play roll-and-write games available at reasonable prices.  We’ve covered a number of them in the past:  Voyages, Scribbly Gum, Waypoints, Aquamarine.

In this newest installment: Welcome to Koala Rescue Club! Koalas are an endangered species so it’s our job to protect them. In this roll and write game, you will plant new trees for koalas to live in and then rehome them safely. Each turn, a die roll determines which configuration of trees or koalas you can draw. Fill in areas to score points, and complete rows and columns to claim special bonus actions. Volunteers will help you by changing the shapes you can draw, and skybridges will open up new areas to plant in. And don’t forget to build hospitals to keep your koalas healthy!

To start the game, choose a map and print out a copy for each player.  As is typical, the advance press version only has the first map, but generally there are a number of different maps to choose from with each Postmark release.  On the map you’ll see a number of green circles, representing the trees with koala icons within.  At the bottom, you’ll see your dashboard area with a player aid, an area for volunteers, an area to record the dice rolls for the two rounds of the game and then the merit badges.

The game is played over 2 rounds, each with 15 turns.  In each turn, someone rolls a d6, and players write down this number in the first available white box in the current round’s area.  Then, using the shape that matches the number rolled, they either circle in trees or rehome koalas  If you have volunteers available, you can cross one off to mentally modify the roll by 1.   You must use the entire polyomino based on the number; if you cannot or choose not to, your consolation is converting into a single space (whether tree or koala).

To plant trees, simply circle uncircled trees.  Again you must use the entire polyomino.  If you want to rehome koalas, you can only do that in trees which are already circled.  The rules want you to draw a smaller koala circle within the tree circle.   My brain has a hard time seeing that so I go for the old-fashioned X-out.  

It’s important to see where you have re-homed koalas because if you ever fully re-home a row or column of koalas, you get the bonus seen in the white circle at the end of said row/column.  This might allow you to plant a single tree, rehome a single koala, gain a volunteer, fill in hospital space or maybe open up a bridge to allow you to use other areas of the board. When you first start the game, you can only use area A, and you will need to quickly give yourself room to roam in this game.  As you end each turn, check to see if you have accomplished any of the three merit badge criteria.  If you are the first to do so, take the higher score.  Anyone else who finishes the badge over the course of the game scores the lower tally.

There are fifteen boxes in each round area in the dashboard, and once you fill in all the boxes in an area, the round ends and you score.  You score one point for each area which is completely planted with trees, one point for each area that is complete with re-homed koalas and points for any hospitals that are full.     You will score at the end of each round.

At the end of the game, add your two end-of-round scores with your merit badge total to get a final score.  The player with the most points wins.  If you are playing solo, you can see how you measure up against a chart in the rules.

Koala Rescue Club is a puzzly polyomino game with two layers of decisions. First, you need to draw trees in specific shapes. Then you need to draw configurations of koalas on top of those trees. As you must plant trees before you can home the koalas, it follows that you mostly tree early on and mostly koala later on.

Cascading bonuses give you extra actions to work with, and you can have some impressive turns as you chain things together.  Keep your eye out on the scoring criteria.  Anything that you score in the first round will automatically score again in the second round; so sometimes it is worthwhile to use up a volunteer or deviate from your overall plan in order to finish a scoring objective before the first round ends.   Finally, don’t forget about those merit badges – they do score nicely, and they score better when you achieve them before anyone else.  

This is a well constructed roll-and-write game, and if you’re still in the market for a new flavor to play – this is a fun one for sure and you can help support a good cause as 10% of the profits go to the Australian Koala Foundation. Established in 1986, the AKF is the principal non-profit, nongovernment organisation dedicated to the effective management and conservation of the Koala and its habitat. Learn more at www.savethekoala.com

If you want to sign up for notifications on the Kickstarter – head here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/postmarkgames/koala-rescue-club