In Forest Shuffle, the mission is clear: build the most lush and ecologically diverse forest! Players compete to plant the most valuable trees and then attract a variety of species – be they animals, plants, or mushrooms – to create a balanced and vibrant habitat. To start, each player receives six cards in hand. These cards can be a type of tree or display two forest dwellers, split in half (vertically or horizontally).

On your turn, you have two options: either draw two cards (from the face-down deck or the open clearing) into your hand, or play a card from your hand, paying its cost and putting it into play. To pay a card's cost, you discard other cards from your hand to the clearing. If you play a tree, it goes into your play area and a new card is flipped to the clearing. If it's a dweller, you pay the cost of only one of the card halves and slide it under a tree that has a matching empty space. A tree can house dwellers on all four of its sides!

There's also the option to play a card face down as a sapling, which costs nothing and can receive dwellers, but doesn't have a defined species. After playing a card, if it has an effect, you activate it immediately. If the clearing accumulates more than nine cards at the end of your turn, the excess is removed from the game. The game ends when the third winter card is revealed from the deck, and points are tallied based on the trees and dwellers in your forest. The player with the highest score wins! Oh, and a cool detail: Forest Shuffle is the first game in the 'Lookout Greenline' series, made with FSC certified paper and no plastic – an extra point for the environmental theme!