Cascadia (digital)

About Cascadia (digital)

Cascadia is a tile-laying board game by Randy Flynn, published by Flatout Games and AEG, which won the Spiel des Jahres in 2022. Dire Wolf's digital version came out on Steam, iOS and Android, with online and pass-and-play matches, a simpler Family mode, 15 solo scenarios and 14 challenges. Each turn you take one of four pairs of a habitat tile and a wildlife token, add the tile to your landscape and place the animal where its habitat allows. At the end you score your largest connected areas of each habitat and your animals by the round's scoring cards: bears in pairs, elk in lines, salmon in runs, and so on.

The Daily Trek is the mode built for a daily visit. Every 24 hours it brings a new solo game with a rule change and a scoring modifier: in one example from Dire Wolf, you could hold no more than two nature tokens, and every fox placed on a river earned extra points. You get three attempts, and your best score, game points plus the day's bonus, goes on a worldwide leaderboard, with medals for playing well to the day's conditions. The store page now lists three such challenges each day.

The pull of the mode is the balance it asks for: chasing the day's bonus too hard can wreck the rest of your landscape, so a good Daily Trek board still has to be a good Cascadia board. It suits board game players who want a short, calm puzzle with a score to compare.

How to play Cascadia (digital)

1. Open Special Modes and choose Daily Trek.
2. Read the day's rule change and scoring modifier before your first turn.
3. Each turn, take one habitat tile and wildlife token pair and add the tile to your landscape.
4. Place the animal on a tile that supports it, aiming at the scoring cards and the day's bonus.
5. Finish the game to post your score; you have three attempts and your best one stays on the leaderboard.

Screenshots

Tips

• The daily bonus is worth only a few points per animal: do not give up a strong habitat corridor to chase it.
• Use your first attempt to learn the day's rule, then plan the second and third around it.
• Nature tokens let you pick a tile and token from different pairs, so save them for the turn that matters.

Questions