Cascadia

I loved Cascadia from the first play, and there is no reason to pretend otherwise. The production is lovely, and the game spreads across the table like a little private park you want to keep building. A good family game does not need to shout. It just needs to make everyone ask for another round.

There are five animal types — salmon, hawks, bears, elk, and foxes — and each begins with one scoring card chosen from five or six possibilities. Those cards reward different arrangements: animals in a line, animals in groups, animals beside particular neighbours. So scoring is not merely about collecting things. It is about collecting the right things in the right shape.

On your turn, you draft animals and habitat tiles, add them to your park, and try to satisfy both the wildlife patterns and the habitat goals. The interaction is quiet but always present: every choice removed from the draft changes what remains for everyone else. There is no downtime, so the table keeps watching, weighing options, and planning the next piece of landscape.

The changing scoring cards give it plenty of replayability, and there are more levels of challenge here than first appear. It works very well with younger children too; if necessary, simply leave out the final habitat scoring. If you buy only one family game this year, Cascadia is the obvious right choice.