Forest Mania

Forest Mania asks for volume: collect as many woodland things as you can, pass as many levels as the clock allows, and see where you stop. It is a score-and-survive board rather than a story.

A timer runs across the whole thing, which shapes the play. Bigger collections score better, but hunting for them costs the seconds that keep you alive, so the winning rhythm is a steady stream of decent clears with an occasional reach for something larger when the board offers it cheaply.

Woodland art keeps it calm to look at, which sits oddly and pleasantly against a format that is quietly always counting down.

Levels keep arriving as long as the clock holds out, so the measure at the end is how deep you got rather than whether you finished. That makes it a good board for a fixed gap in the day: the game ends when your time does, not the other way round.

1. Swap two adjacent pieces to gather three or more of a kind.
2. Keep a steady pace; the timer runs through the whole session.
3. Reach for a larger collection only when it is already close to formed.
4. Pass as many levels as you can before time runs out.

Set yourself a two-second rule: if nothing obvious appears in two seconds, take the first legal match instead of hunting. On a timed collection board, the clear you make now funds the search you make next.