Stats:
No. of players: 2-6
Amount of time to play: 30 min
Age requirements: 4+
Set-up time: minimal

Enchanted Forest won the Spiel des Jahres in 1982 and has recently been reprinted. In this children’s game you must hunt to find the king’s desired treasure. The first player to find three treasures wins.

Enchanted Forest Rules Description:

The latest printing of Enchanted Forest includes simpler rules for younger kids thus the change from ages six and up to ages 4 and up. The classic play rules are still detailed and I’ll talk about both.

No matter which rules you use, the game is set up the same way. You place the 13 trees on the tree spaces, shuffle the treasure tiles and place them in the castle with the top tile face up. Each player’s pawn is placed in the village and you are ready to play.

Each tree has an icon on the bottom that matches one of the treasure tiles. As you move around the board there are blue spaces that let you peek under the adjacent tree. You must go to the key space in the castle and guess which tree matches the current treasure. You look at the tree and if you are correct reveal it and keep the treasure. If you guess wrong you are sent back to the village. Once you have three treasures you win the game.

In the simpler version of the game you roll both six-sided dice and may move up to that amount. You cannot land on another player and must end your movement before them or have rolled high enough to move passed them.

Classic play lets you land on another player sending them back to the village and activate magic when you roll doubles. You can use magic to move to the horseshoe in the castle, instantly move to any tree space and look and the corresponding tree or shuffle the treasure tiles. Also when you roll the dice you must move the total sum of them. But you can count them as two separate moves as long as you only go one direction with each die result.

Quick Review of Enchanted Forest:

Enchanted Forest is a fun kids game that adults can enjoy too. It is simple and with the easier rules can even be played with really young kids.

The components for this game are very nice. The little trees are cute and the art fits the theme. The rules are quick and easy read. The only tricky part is the movement for the classic play.

This simple roll-and-move memory game is light and fun. It was cool talking to my kids about all the different fairy tales and filling them in on the ones they were not familiar with.

When I was looking for clarification on the movement in classic pay I came across an older version of the rules that let you use just one die to get to the key space in the castle. I liked this as it made it easier to get there to guess and bump people off the space.

You probably wouldn’t bring Enchanted Forest to play with your gamer friends. But if you have kids (especially young ones) you would enjoy playing this with them.

Score and synopsis: (Click here for an explanation of these review categories.)
Strategy 2 out of 6
Luck 5 out of 6
Player Interaction 3 out of 6
Replay Value 3 out of 6
Complexity 2 out of 6
Fun 4 out of 6
Overall 4 out of 6