Woodland: The Zoo Building Game
A strategic zoo-building board game where every animal tells a story. Coming soon to Kickstarter — sign up to follow the journey and get day-one launch access.
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Collect the right colors, build the best zoo
In Woodland, cards come in five vibrant colors—red, blue, green, yellow, and wild. Collect them wisely to play animals that match your strategy and maximize your score.
Red Cards: Used to build powerful savanna animals like elephants and rhinos.
Blue Cards: Perfect for aquatic species such as penguins and sea lions.
Green Cards: Let you add forest dwellers like pandas and bears.
Yellow Cards: Ideal for birds and plains animals like ostriches.
Wild Cards: Flexible and rare—count as any color when building animals.
Each animal in Woodland is represented by a unique card, like the Monkey, Beaver, or Polar Bear. In the top-left corner of every card, you'll see the animal's Size—this tells you how many tiles it takes to build that animal on your board. Larger animals take up more space, but they’re worth more points… if you can find room for them.
At the bottom of the card, a row of five colored icons—Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, and Wild—shows the specific card cost to build that animal. Think of these like your building materials. Collect the right combination, and that animal is yours to place.
- Size: Number of tiles the animal takes on your grid
- Color Cost: Required color cards needed to build it
- Wilds: Can be used in place of any color
- Strategic Placement: Fit animals on your board to maximize points
Refined Through Playtesting
One of the early boards of the game. Was a different concept back then! Each player had a section of the board, and it was their job to fill it in with zoo animals as best as possible.
There was even “ROCK” pieces, where you could try to sabotage your opponent’s area to prevent them from getting bonus points.
These concepts are gone; the upside to playtesting over and over! From all the game sessions and feedback, this game rose from a pile of paper and ideas to the fun zoo building game that will be available soon!
Over a year in development
Some examples of the earliest playing cards for the game. In this early version, the shape to play was actually on the card itself.
These were printed at home and given to family and play testers. The worst part of cards printed at home? You can see through the paper! It was fun watching players use two hands to cover their cards to hide them.
For the draw deck, some people even had to put coasters over the deck to hide the next card!
Shoutout to all the play testers of Woodland, putting up with homemade pieces and parts during the development of the game. It has changed so much over the last year.
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