Are your kids studying forest animals, food chains or webs, ecology, or do they just love animals? Habitat is a great card game for you to try! It can be hard to find, but I think Ecology is similar.

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All cards are in one large deck. They may be resources, animals, or events. Every player begins the game with one resource card dealt face-up and five additional cards dealt face-down. Habitat has two phases: growth and events. The growth phases happen simultaneously, without turns, while the event phases are turn-based. The game alternates between growth and event phases until one player has at least one card of each rank (1-8) in play at once.

During growth phases, players use the cards in their hands to build onto their food chains. Each player can have up to five food chains at any one time. Food chains are built by placing higher-ranked cards above lower-ranked cards. Players must take into account what each animal eats, what realm (water, land, or air) it occupies, and any special considerations on each card.

Food chains may be rearranged each growth phase, and players may play as many cards as they want (or none at all). However, once played, cards may not be taken back into the hand. At the end of the growth phase, any unfed animals are placed into the starving display.

Some of the animals in the deck are scavengers. Some of these scavengers can also be fed in a traditional food chain by eating other animals or resources, but some can only be played if there are animals in the starving display. These scavengers count as their own food chain (so you can only have up to four other food chains).

During the event phase, players take turns. You may play an event card, exert territoriality, or rescue animals in the starving display. If you play an event card you can then rescue animals, but not if you exert territoriality. At the end of your turn, draw two cards. These cards can either be both from the face-down deck, the face-up discard pile (not the same as the starving display), or one from each. After drawing your cards, turn the top card from the deck over into the discard pile so there is always a fresh card on top.

The hand limit is five cards, so if drawing two cards puts you at over five cards, you must immediately discard down to just five cards.

Event cards are relatively simple; you simply follow the instructions on the card. Some are good, some are not. Some are particular to a player, some impact all players.

My family tends not to exert territoriality as it involves stealing another player’s food chain. If you have an animal in your hand that is a higher rank than every card in an opponent’s food chain (just one of their food chains) AND can eat at least one card in that food chain, you can steal part or all of that food chain. Any cards you are not able to steal to feed your animal are placed into the starving display.

In my family, we get a little attached to our creations, whether it’s an animal in Evolution, a civilization in Catan, or a food chain in Habitat. So, we try not to steal or otherwise sabotage each others’ creations. It’s not very realistic, but our familial goodwill is more important than learning.

If you do not exert territoriality on your turn, you can choose to rescue animals from the starving display. You can rescue as many as you want, but you must start at the top and work your way down. Each animal you rescue must be able to be used in one of your food chains, following all the rules of placing cards in food chains. Resources in the starving display cannot be rescued, preventing animals below them from being rescued.