HUTAN: Life in the Rainforest

• Designer: Asger Harding Granerud, Daniel Skjold Pedersen
• Publisher: Sidekick Games, The Op
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 8+
• Time: 30-45 min
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3DiBlDB
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Step into a world of wonder and natural splendor with HUTAN: Life in the Rainforest, an immersive family game inspired by the Indonesian word for rainforest.  In HUTAN, all players have their own rainforest patch where they will plant sprouts and flowers that over time grow into towering trees. When a habitat is created, an iconic forest animal arrives: the orangutan, the sumatran tiger, the rhinoceros hornbill, the cassowary, or the sumatran rhino.

HUTAN plays over nine rounds, and all players have two turns each round. On your turn, you take a flower card from the shared market pool and place the flowers into your rainforest. If you place a flower on top of a matching flower, you grow a tree. When an area is completed with trees, the last tree is replaced by an animal. At the end of the game, the player who grew the best rainforest and attracted the most animals will score the most points and win.

To set up the game, one player takes a set of four rainforest boards (each with a different icon) and arranges them in front of them in a 2×2 pattern;  all the other players copy this arrangement with their own set.   9 sets of flower cards are composed, one for each round of the game – the number of cards in each stack is dependent on player count. The trees, flower and animals are all placed nearby in the supply.  If you choose to play the advanced game, shuffle the 24 Ecosystem cards and draw 5 at random to use this game.  Each Ecosystem card has a special scoring criteria on it.

The game will be played over 9 rounds, with each player taking two turns in each round.  At the start of each round, whoever has the start player marker flips over any one flower card set and reveals all those cards face up on the table.  The start player marker is also placed in this display.   Play goes clockwise from the current start player.  There are three phases to each turn

1] Plant Flowers – Take a face up flower card from the display.  Get the matching flower tokens from the supply and then place those flowers onto your Rainforest boards. You must place all flowers this turn in a contiguous group, and that group must be adjacent to a previously placed flower.  You may place flowers on top of previously placed flowers of matching color.  You cannot place on water spaces.  You could also choose to take the Start Player marker which lets you go first next turn and gives you one flower of any color.

2] Grow Trees and Complete Areas – When you have two flowers of matching color stacked on the same space, return the top flower and place a tree in that space; this will score you points at the end of the game.  The board is split into lots of little islands, from 2-5 spaces; each area is considered “complete” if all the spaces in that area are filled with flowers of the same color.

3] Perfect Habitats – A perfect Habitat is one where all spaces in an area have the same color flower on all the spaces as well as a tree on each space. An animal is placed on the tree last placed in that Area.  It will score points at the end of the game.  Animals can also fertilize adjacent spaces – you can place Flowers of any color on all orthogonally adjacent spaces.

A round is complete when play has gone around the table twice. The market should be empty at that time.  Repeat the process until 9 rounds are complete.  At the end of the game, players tabulate their points:

• Trees: 2 points each
• Animals: points seen in the paw icon of the area
• Completed area: points next to the checkmark icon in the area
• Unfinished or mixed areas: NEGATIVE points next to the red X icon in the area
• Ecosystem cards: if playing the advanced game, score each of the 5 Ecosystem cards individually

The player with the most points wins

My thoughts on the game

HUTAN is a very colorful game that follows in the footsteps of previous games from this combination of publisher and designers.  Just from its appearance, it’s very reminiscent of Aqua – a game that we reviewed last year.   This game also is nature/environmentally themed; though in this case we’re trying to grow trees in the rainforest.

The goal here is to plant a lot of flowers in contiguous blocks (also matching the pattern seen on your islands), and much of this plan is made through the drafting of cards.  There is a nice system here where turn order is one of the things that you can choose in the draft.  This is usually a fairly coveted choice; not only does it give you the best pick for the next round, but it also comes with a single wild flower – so it’s guaranteed to fit somewhere that you want it to go AND you don’t get any extra flowers to have to deal with.  The scoring system is such that you only get positive points for perfection – all non-perfect areas score negatively at the end of the game.  This system does lead to some tense moments in the end game, but I feel like it also maybe leads to more conservative play overall.

The rules themselves are simple, and people should get the hang of it within a few turns.  What is less easy to grasp is the advance planning needed to get your flowers in the right place (without too many extra flowers).  Also, I definitely try to point out to newbies that the animals are somewhat limited in supply, so while you want to sometimes wait and play slow to get the perfect cards; if you wait too long, you won’t be able to get the rewards for your perfect areas…

The components are beautiful, and the player boards do look quite nice as the trees sprout up all around the area.  I should also make note that the game includes extra cardboard for a really nice divided box bottom – everything stores quite nicely in the box with their setup. I have saved the empty punchboards and with those on top, everything stays nicely in place, even with my games stored on their side.

As I mentioned earlier, this looks and feels a lot like Aqua – and the solo game and achievement structure also echoes its predecessor.  There is a nice set of rules for the solo player, and if you’re the sort of person who is going to play a game 20, 30 or maybe 50 times – there is a full list of achievements for you to check off as you accomplish the varied tasks on the list.

Sidekick Games (and the Op) have found a nice formula here for these family weight puzzle-y games.  There is more to Hutan than just pretty bits, but not so much that it will exclude folks from learning the game.  There are advanced rules to help make it a bit more gamer-y, but I think that this will end up being too light for most of my serious game nights (the same grey zone that Aqua falls into).  However, for the market that the Op usually targets, I think this will be a great fit.  If you want a light family-level puzzle game OR you’re looking for a game with a nice solo element and lots of challenges/achievements – this could be for you.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it.
• Neutral. Dale Y
• Not for me…

Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3DiBlDB