Brushwood (2026)

Overview

Brushwood is a peaceful yet strategic set-collection game for 2–4 players. Players take on the role of hikers navigating a vast, ever-changing forest trail to observe local wildlife, pick up berries, and forage for mushrooms.

On each turn, a player moves the shared hiker meeple one to three spaces forward along a trail of forest card stacks, then claims the top card from the trail space where they end their movement. When moving more than one space, they must place a berry token on each card they pass, making those cards more valuable for whoever lands there later. As the players collect the trail cards, they build a personal hiking route, a linear tableau which they strategically arrange to maximize their end-game points from animal sightings and mushroom foraging. When foraging, players can aim for high-value mushroom tokens by collecting enough cards of a specific type or act quickly to secure available tokens before others do.

The game ends when the forest trail begins to thin out, and players score points based on their berry majorities, mushroom tokens, animal sightings, and clever use of binoculars and birdhouses.

—description from the publisher