Manage your local animal shelter as you take in old rescue dogs and teach them new training tricks to help them find their forever home. Draft the right Training Cards, find the perfect homes for your dogs, and complete the different shelter commendation challenges to score the most reputation points and be crowned the ultimate doggie matchmaker!
What Is Forever Home?
Forever Home is an abstract, tile placement and pattern building game, from the makers of the 2022 hit Dog Park, for 1-5 players, ages 8 and up, that takes about 30-45 minutes to play. The base game retails at $32.99 and is now available for pre-order via the Birdwood Games website. Forever Home features easy and straightforward gameplay that utilizes several icons, making this one almost language independent and a good fit with kids even younger than the 8+ years suggested on the box. And with a variable objective setup, Forever Home has plenty of replayability right out of the box.
Forever Home was designed by Lottie and Jack Hazell, with art from Dominique Vassie and Dann May, and was published by Birdwood Games.
Forever Home Components
- 98 Dog Tokens (14 each of the 7 different breeds)
- 50 Training Cards
- 13 Home Cards (1x Foster, 2x City, 4x Countryside, 6x Suburbs)
- 7 Dog Meeples
- 5 Shelter Boards (double-sided)
- 1 Commendations Board (double-sided)
- 1 Cloth Bag
- 1 Scorepad
- 16 Solo Challenge Cards
- 1 Solo Round Tracker Cube
The production of Forever Home is definitely a strong suit, a testament to the effect that great art and iconography can have on a game. In reality, the game itself is just some chits and cards and a few player boards, but because of the vibrant colors and the lovely art, everything just pops and makes you want to dig into it right away.
The replayability in this game is also an element that deserves some recognition – with the random objective selection on the Commendations Board at the beginning of the game, each play of this game feels distinctly different and offers new challenges with each new combination. Also, the Shelter Boards are double-sided with an Advanced Shelter side on the back, further adding to the levels of differentiation and difficulty in the game.
Overall, Forever Home does a great job of being a canvas for some adorable and expressive doggie art, both on the box and in the game. It provides an inviting visual that will have any dog lover grabbing it off of the shelf straight away – but the real question is: how does it play?
How to Play Octopie
You can download a copy of the rulebook here.
The Goal
The goal of Forever Home is to have the most reputation points at the end of the game. You’ll be gathering said reputation points by completing different patterns on your Training Cards, meeting the scoring requirements on the 4 Home Cards, and winning the majority bonuses of breeds on the Commendations Board. Play continues until one player completes their 7th Training Card at which point, the remaining players complete the round, count their points, and whoever has the most reputation points, wins!
Setup
The setup for Forever Home begins with arranging the Commendations Board. Randomly select one of the seven Dog Meeples to go on each open spot on the board which fall into three categories: Most in Training, Most Rehomed, and Most in Different Homes. This will determine the majority scoring conditions for this game – whoever has the most of that specific breed of dog in that specific category will score a small bonus at the game’s end.
Once the Commendations Board has been filled, it’s time to round out the objectives for the game. Keeping them in their respective category piles, shuffle the Home Cards and select one for each of the four locations, City, Suburbs, Countryside, and Foster Home. Place them above the Commendations Board – these represent another way to score end-game points and can be very valuable if completed correctly.
Next, shuffle the deck of 50 Training Cards and reveal a drafting row of them, the size of which depends on the player count. With 2-3 players, you’ll reveal four cards face up, and with 4-5 players, you’ll instead reveal five cards. Once this is done, deal out a starting hand of two Training Cards to each player and then place the deck next to the draft row.
Now, it’s time for the Dog Tokens. Toss all 98 Dog Tokens in the provided bag and then draw one token for every face up Training Card in the draft row. Place those Dog Tokens above the row, one above each card, to be replenished upon drafting. Then draw some more Dog Tokens, two per player, and place them in the center of the table as a community draw pool.
Next, give each player a Shelter Board and have them collectively choose a side to play on. For first time players, it is recommended to start on the Regular Shelter side and to save the Advanced Shelter side for future plays. No matter what you choose though, all players must play on the same side of their player boards.
Take a moment now to randomly select a first player and give them the Scorepad. Then, starting with the first player, each player will select one Dog Token from the community pool, replenishing the tokens as you go, until everyone has one. Then, snake draft style, starting with the last player in turn order, players will draft a second Dog Token until everyone has two. Then everyone will take their two Dog Tokens and place them somewhere on their 5×5 Shelter Board (preferably in a way that will setup their starting Training Cards) and then the game is ready to begin!
Gameplay
Forever Home is a surprisingly simple game that boils down to three main actions: adding rescue dogs into your Shelter grid, moving them around to create patterns, and collecting Training Cards that will eventually rehome your shelter dogs. You can take any two of these actions on your turn, including the same one twice, and if you have trouble remembering your options, each action is conveniently represented in a reference box on the edge of your Shelter Board.
Let’s begin by describing each of these actions in order, starting with adding dogs to your Shelter Board. On your turn, you can use an action to take a Dog Token of your choice from the central area (never from the bag) and once taken, the Dog Token is immediately replaced by another from the cloth bag. Once you’ve picked your tile, you’ll need to immediately place it onto your Shelter Board before you take another action, the only stipulation being that it has to go onto an empty space that is not currently occupied by another dog.
The next action you can take is to move your Dog Tokens around in your Shelter grid. For one action, you can move a Dog Token a single space, either orthogonally or diagonally, given that the space is currently empty. This action is oftentimes not as valuable as the other two but can be a good way to quickly rearrange your Shelter grid to meet the requirements of your Training Cards.
The last action you can take is to draft a Training Card from the middle to add to your hand. When drafted, the Training Card is immediately replaced in the draw row making sure that you always have a full row to draft from. It should also be noted that you can never have more than 5 Training Cards in your hand and that you can never draft a card off the top of the deck.
The last main concept for you to be aware of is the act of completing Training Cards. Because this action happens automatically upon completing a pattern detailed on one of your Training Cards, it is free to take and doesn’t count towards your allotted two actions per turn. In fact, if you’re able to, you can complete multiple Training Cards on the same turn, with one caveat: you must complete these cards one at a time making sure you pay the Graduation cost each time.
The Graduation cost of each Training Card is located in the top left corner in the green house icon. This represents how many dogs in the completed pattern must be rehomed once the requirements have been met. Any Dog Tokens in the pattern you choose to rehome will be removed from your Shelter grid and placed on one of the four Home locations of your choice at the top of your board, which correspond to the four Home Card goals that were selected at the beginning of the game. Any Dog Tokens that were not rehomed will remain on your Shelter Board and can be used in future Training Card patterns.
Game End
As soon as one player completes their seventh Training Card, they must announce it to the table which will trigger the end of the game. This player will finish their turn and then play will continue until all players have taken the same amount of turns. There is also a small chance that players would run out of Dog Tokens or Training Cards – in this case, the game end would also be triggered and the final round would be played out in the same way.
Once all players have finished their last turn, final scores will be calculated by adding up the following reputation point categories:
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- Reputation from completed Training Cards (shown in the dog tag in the bottom right corner)
- Reputation from completed Home Card goals
- Reputation from majorities on the Commendations Board
After all categories have been tabulated, whoever has the most reputation points wins! If there is a tie, the player who rehomed the most total dogs wins, and if the tie persists, then the players share the victory.
Why You Should Play Forever Home
Forever Home is a lovely little game that requires more abstract thinking than you would expect, but still falls comfortably into the gateway game genre that has become so popular in the last few years. It does a great job of promising a cozy experience from the get-go, starting with the stunning box art and the adorable theme, and then delivering on that experience with some light, puzzly gameplay.
In general, artistic direction has been a strong suit of publisher Birdwood Games ever since their first release, Dog Park, captured the hearts of many with its countless dog illustrations, and Forever Home is certainly no exception. The masses of happy, cuddling dogs conjured up by artists Dominique Vassie and Dann May are just so fun to encounter in every facet of the game and really make this one a title that the casual dog lover would gravitate towards immediately.
I will say, I am always a bit wary of games that sport themes that are really accessible and exciting to the casual gaming crew because oftentimes, the gameplay can end up being a little too complex for that beginner crowd which can lead to confusion, a slogged-through first play, or even worse, a game left unplayed altogether. But Forever Home does a fantastic job of keeping things simple and straightforward, limiting the decision space, and making sure that the Venn diagram intersection of people who like dogs and people who will enjoy this game is as large as possible.
As far as gameplay goes, I enjoyed the puzzle of trying to complete different Training Cards and combining them to get the most out of each turn. As a very goal-oriented board gamer, I love games that include some sort of contract fulfillment mechanism and the Training Cards really scratched that itch for me. The only limiting factor to this puzzle though was the lack of choice within the drafting pools. Especially in a two player game, the Dog Token pool felt really small and with no way to flush it and repopulate it, if the dogs you needed weren’t available on your turn, you’d be forced to either draw one and hope you got lucky on the restock or simply stall until something useful showed up, neither of which felt like a strategic action.
The only other thing I’ll add to this is that although I love a good dog theme as much as the next person, compared to their first title Dog Park which felt like it was dripping in thematic elements, Forever Home felt a little more “skinned over”. Even though there are several different breeds of dog represented in the game, because none of them have anything thematically unique about them, they tend to feel more just like pawns on the board, reduced to their color rather than valued for their differences. This can most likely be attributed to the fact that Forever Home is an abstract game, competing with the more traditional board game feel of its predecessor Dog Park but it still left something to be desired.
All that said, Forever Home still delivers on its promise to be a cozy, lightweight game that all dog lovers can enjoy. Its simplicity makes it accessible to the whole family, even those younger than its suggested 8+ tag, and its modular scoring setup means that you can play this one over and over again. So if you’re looking for something nice and easy to play with family, with some amazing dog illustrations that’ll make you want to rescue one for yourself, then might I suggest: Forever Home?
For more information about Forever Home, visit Birdwood Games’ website.
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Disclosure: GeekDad received a copy of this game for review purposes.
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