Cascadia: The Best Family of Bears and Excellent Scenarios
Expand terrain to make homes for animals like elk and salmon in the beautiful Pacific Northwest wilderness of Cascadia.
I only started to make progress on the various scenarios in Cascadia last year, and it was certainly a long time since I last played! With plenty of scenarios left to go, I was ready to settle in and enjoy this wonderful puzzle. And it sounded like I probably had some Calico Critter visitors ready to appear out of nowhere to enjoy all the fun. Onward to this cozy game!
Game Overview
Game Name: Cascadia
Publication Year: 2021
Designer: Randy Flynn
Artist: Beth Sobel
Publishers: Alderac Entertainment Group & Flatout Games
Solo Mode: Included in the Base Game
A set of goals offer different scoring conditions for the animals, and aligning habitats is crucial to making it all work. Various scenarios offer specific objectives and challenges, which can be very exciting! It all comes together in a quick and rewarding sort of solo experience. So pretty!
First Play
August 1, 2021
Complexity
2
Latest Play
October 18, 2025
Expansions
1
Setup Time
5 Minutes
Lifetime Plays
20
Play Time
15 Minutes
High Score
101
Game Area
24" x 22"
Low Score
73
Scenario Gameplay
Although the solo mode can be enjoyed without a specific set of animal goal cards, the scenarios are fantastic! They include objectives that slowly ramp up in difficulty level.
A total of 15 are included, and prior to this session, I had barely scratched the surface. Consistent play helps to build up the skills needed to achieve victory in later scenarios.
Fortunately, I had a pretty good idea of what I had to do! This wasn’t going to be simple, but it was also relaxing.
Besides not achieving victory, each play is still fun. A lovely little area takes shape, and it’s nice to see all of the animals!
Filling Up the Scene
Such a beautiful sight at the end. Choices about tiles and tokens are always interesting, and despite there being a bit of luck, it’s rare to run out of actual good options.
This scenario resulted in a victory, courtesy of the even number of animal tokens and scoring criteria.
Salmon runs threw me off early on with what they looked like, but I figured it out! It’s more like a twisting singular line… Which makes sense to me, at least. Ha ha!
I forgot about the bonus scoring with larger habitats, and switched up my strategy before I won this scenario. Yeah!
Real Grizzly Bears!
Watch out for the bears! So many bears! Alright, so maybe these Calico Critters were a little too cute to really take on the role of the enormous grizzly bear. But they tried.
I love the artwork in the game, although it’s pretty minimal. The scoring cards are where these are mostly focused.
The different kinds of animals are wonderful in the ways they have a sort of unique scoring focus. Bears are often focused on groups, like the families shown here.
Split up properly, this entire family would have given me the maximum victory points from this card. Quite helpful!
Puzzling Placements
Now, the worst feeling is when the right animal token isn’t coming out… Or when one does, and you realize you forgot to put out a matching habitat tile. Well done on my part.
There are a lot of pieces to think about at once, yet I’ve never found this to be too much. It’s technically a case of considering 5 animals and 5 habitats… But that’s still OK!
My mind likes the lighter choices and it often takes seconds to identify the best tile and animal token during a round.
It gets tougher near the end, but again, not to a point that I get overwhelmed. Just a nice, relaxing, calm experience.
A Comfortable Environment
Part of playing so many cozy games has been capturing the feeling they offer up. It’s definitely related to comfort. And that relates to something I’ve found hasn’t been present… Surprise. I don’t mean the delightful little moments when I find the perfect card or grab the right Calico Critter. Ha! It’s more noticing how unpleasant surprises are missing from cozy games.
In this case, it’s not like there’s a token in the bag that will instantly end the game. It’s all known, yet the challenge is in piecing together the puzzle. Similarly, other cozy games don’t create a sense of tension about what might happen next. It’s just a relaxing experience where there’s unpredictability without worry… If that makes sense. Wait, I have an example!
I vividly recall playing Don’t Wake Daddy many times as a child. It’s a simple game, but the core is pressing a button a number of times… At a random interval, this wakes up daddy and he sits up abruptly in a startling fashion! I always found it hilarious, but that’s the sort of unpleasant surprise and stress I’m not looking for in a cozy game. Leave that in the 90s!
Watch Out for Hawks
Each play usually has a particular animal that takes a little longer to work out. However, the hawks seemed to always give me a hard time with their line of sight rules.
I enjoyed the challenge, though! Most of the other animals, except possibly the fox, were more about groups. Or, there was a focus on a single area that felt easy to evaluate.
Hawks forced me to look far away to try to connect them in straight lines, often with a goal in between. Very tricky!
Fun, too! As the scenarios continued to get harder, I never felt like I was going to luck into a win. I had to work hard.
Grizzly Bear Poses
I totally forgot about the backs of the scoring cards, until this little friend struck a pose that looked familiar. A-ha! More artwork to appreciate with a familiar silhouette.
My one minor issue with the tiles are the ways the different habitats end abruptly. I sometimes feel like I want to align everything perfectly, even if that means a lower score.
It’s still interesting to think about what that might look like, and it doesn’t detract from gameplay in any way.
I had to gently shoo this tiny bear along… More scenarios to play through, little friend! More bears guaranteed. Ha ha!
A Wonderful Moment
Talk about a pine cone overload! This scenario required me to save up a few for final scoring, and I suppose I may have gone overboard. But I didn’t need to use them, thankfully.
My salmon run looked rather embarrassing, but this was still a victory! Definitely a spot where the elk ran free with just enough separation from the bears. See? More bears!
But it was the ninth scenario that stopped me in my tracks. Try as I might, that one was not going to result in victory!
Well, this time. I felt like I would return again with a fresh mind down the line… Definitely a game to keep playing.
Bear Token Troubles?
During some plays, the token draw bag seemed to give me everything but the right animal. Other times, I kept clearing them out when multiples showed up again and again.
I enlisted some help to peer inside and see what was going on in there! And this just explains it all. Tiny bears doling out bear tokens with whatever logic they followed. Ha!
Actually, take a look at the one on the left, and the lighting seems to have captured a very faint lip curl or smirk. Cute!
Bears or no bears, this was a wonderfully cozy game to come back to. I’ll return to tackle some more scenarios!
Session Overview
Play Number: 9-18
Solo Mode: Included in the Base Game
Play Details: Scenarios 6, 7, 8, & 9
Outcome: 73, 81, 91, 81, 91, 97, 90, 90, 96, 91 (3 Wins, 7 Losses)
So close! It was the hawks that threw me off again, and even after spending all of my pine cones, there was no way to earn 10 victory points from these hawks. Next time! There is something excellent about the way gameplay works. The puzzle isn’t complex, yet the different goals and scenarios help create plenty of variety and new things to think about. And… Bears. Because bears are awesome. Ha ha!
%
20 Plays
Affordability
Price & Value
9
Functionality
Challenges & Mechanics
10
Originality
Design & Theme
7
Quality
Components & Rules
9
Reusability
Achievement & Enjoyment
8
Variability
Distinctness & Randomness
6
+ Pros (Positives)
- Gameplay is very smooth with interesting decisions and a puzzle with a few layers, yet it’s never overwhelming.
- Scenarios offer a way to slowly increase the difficulty level and explore new strategies that are more nuanced.
- Final scores sometimes end up very close, but the map and way the rounds progress feel very different.
- Artwork is mostly limited to the animal scoring goals, yet it’s fantastic and helps create a very calm atmosphere.
- Maps can expand in any direction, yet the 20-round limit ensures the play area doesn’t spread out too much.
- All of the habitat and animal types are unique in appearance, not just color, and are easy to tell apart from far away.
– Cons (Negatives)
- Some luck plays into the available tiles and animal tokens, and it can be very difficult to find the right ones at times.
- Setup is pretty quick and easy, yet separating out the tiles and counting them can feel just a little bit tedious.
- A few scenario icons aren’t as clearly defined, which may require a quick online search to figure out their meanings.
- It can be difficult to manage all of the animal goals when they’re all partially complete, although the challenge is fun.
Victory Conditions
Meet the Scenario Requirements
- Overall Goal Progress 65%
Goals and Milestones
Score at least 90 points.
Score at least 100 points.
Complete every scenario. (9/15)
Continue the Conversation
What do you enjoy the most about playing Cascadia? Have you managed to win every scenario? I’ve still got a long way to go, but I love how the challenge slowly ramps up. The different features to think about for scoring are great! This one is a nice blend of simple rules and meaningful choices. Definitely looking forward to coming back to work on more scenarios!
How many games did it take you to reduce the playing time to 20 minutes? The reason I ask is I am interested in this game as a lunch break game but I have a hard limit of 30 minutes for these games. Setup is 5 minutes, teardown is no time (I can always sort components later) so the game has to take no more than 25 minutes.
Good question! I think part of it is my play process: I tend to go much faster after I’ve played with a set of scoring goals a few times. If I played with random goals, that likely would put it over the time limit you’re looking at. I sometimes slow down during the last couple of rounds when I really need to make an animal token work in order to win, too!
Scoring can take up a few minutes, so that might be able to be reduced by taking a photo to get the final score later. Pre-sorting the required tiles in a separate bag could also be helpful to cut down on setup time. But it’s probably a case of understanding the scoring goals ahead of time to keep it into a short time frame.
I would recommend timing your plays when you have some extra time, just to see what your baseline is! My play times are very subjective, and I sometimes have times that are very different from the standard expected play time (either more or less). If you’re close to 25 minutes now, that definitely seems doable! But if you’re taking longer, it might be a better idea to find smaller games that will typically play in around 10-15 minutes. Hope this helps you out!