Restoria
A light strategy card game about restoring California grasslands.
$24.99
US shipping is added at checkout from your address. USPS Ground Advantage is about $8.39 nearby and about $13.42 coast to coast. We ship from Healdsburg, California.
What is Restoria?
You take on the role of an ecologist working to restore grasslands. Your challenge is to build a species-diverse plant community that is resilient to wildfires, drought, and other events.
- Draw from 31 different plant cards, each with abilities and characteristics based on real-life research.
- Each plant species interacts with adjacent plants, so where you place each plant matters.
- Play land management cards, such as prescribed burns or grazing, to remove invasive species or nurture your community.
The game's mechanics incorporate the four high-level processes of community ecology: selection, drift, speciation, and dispersal. Restoria is a strategic challenge and an educational one.
Box contents
Restoria is portable and quick to set up. It was designed to be taken along on fieldwork and camping trips.
- 56 plant cards
- 18 invasive cards
- 30 event cards
- 12 land management cards
- 8 goal cards
- 6 guide cards
- 48 nutrient cubes
- 6 biomass counters
- 1 die
Game overview
In the middle of the table is the plant nursery, five plant cards shared between all players. Next to the nursery are the events deck and the plants deck. Off to the side are nutrients, your money. Each player has a biomass counter to track their score.
Each turn, players choose plants from the nursery to add to their community. Special events, such as rainy days or wildfires, also occur each turn, affecting plants in different ways.
Once a player's community reaches 10 plant cards, the game ends after the last player finishes their turn. The player whose community attains the highest biomass wins.
The game can be played with 2–6 players, takes 45–75 minutes, and is recommended for ages 9+. There are many paths to victory. The rules are fairly simple, learnable even after a long day's work in the field.
Plants
Plants are the main cards you'll play. They cost nutrients and give you biomass. Each plant must be played adjacent to an existing plant. You choose which plants to take and where they sit in relation to each other.
Every plant has a unique ability and characteristics.
- Ability. Scoring bonuses or interactions with other plants in your community. Each ability is based on a real-world trait of that species. Black mustard (Brassica nigra) has allelopathy, which hinders the growth of adjacent plants, just as it does in real life.
- Characteristics. These decide whether the plant is affected by events such as rain, wildfire, or erosion. Grasses tend to grow quickly when it rains, and they are more vulnerable to wildfires than forbs. Non-native plants tend to provide lots of biomass, and they are susceptible to erosion. Tall plants thrive on sunny days and cast shade on smaller plants nearby.
Each plant features hand-painted artwork. Playing Restoria, you can learn the scientific names of plants, get a sense of their ecological significance, and perhaps recognize them on your next walk.
Our story
Restoria is co-designed by Lina Aoyama Batas, a plant ecologist, and her husband, Brent Batas, a video game designer who develops Legion TD 2. They play tabletop games in their spare time, and Brent designs tabletop games as a hobby.
When the pandemic hit in 2020, Lina started painting California plants. Brent suggested using those illustrations to make a card game. They worked on the gameplay over several months, and kept revising the cards so the game would be scientifically sound and playable. Friends playtested it so it would be fun and accessible. They wanted a game they would enjoy with friends, and one portable enough for fieldwork or camping trips.
Over several years they playtested Restoria themselves and with Lina's University of Oregon labmates. After five major iterations over four years, they settled on a final version and worked with a manufacturer to produce it.
The hope is to see Restoria in science classrooms and public parks, where it can inspire a love of science, teach players a thing or two about plants, and most of all be a fun game to play.
