I have a habit of remembering things by seasons: real ones, emotional ones and, at times, the ones marked in cardboard. There’s a season of my life that began five years ago, when I first started playing board games regularly. And like many beginnings, it didn’t announce itself. There was no dramatic awakening, no grand declaration of “I am now a hobbyist”. It simply started with a game about a forest.

Everdell was, quite unintentionally, the key that unlocked something in me. And although I’ve played countless games since (some louder, heavier, sharper, stranger), I keep returning to this gentle woodland valley, as if it’s a place where I left a version of myself who still has something to say.

This board game blog you are reading is three years old now. It wouldn’t exist without Everdell.

A Whimsical World, Carefully Crafted

Everdell looks whimsical at first glance: tiny animal meeples, a flourishing valley and, yes, the now-iconic cardboard Ever Tree overseeing the board like a benevolent guardian. But beneath all of that charm lies a game about resourcefulness, vision and patience.

You place workers, you gather resources and you build your little woodland city: farms and libraries, post offices and mines, inns filled with hedgehogs and palaces visited by badgers in fine coats. Your critters become more than symbols. They become a community.

And what I love is that the game never rushes you. It invites you to find your pace. There is no pressure, no demand for haste. There is only time passing, season by season.

A Game About Timing (And About Knowing When to Let Go)

One of Everdell’s most elegant mechanics is how each player takes their own seasons at their own pace. You don’t all move together. You move when you’re ready. Or when you must.

This mechanic taught me something that took me much longer to learn in real life: Starting early is not the same as finishing well.

Sometimes you sprint through Spring and Summer, thinking you’re efficient, only to find that you reach Winter much too soon and have nothing left to do while everyone else continues building.

And sometimes the player who took their time, who gathered slowly, who built thoughtfully, wins softly, with a city of harmonious little lives.

Everdell is not merely a board game.
It is patience you can hold in your hands.

The Day It Changed Something

When I first played, something subtle clicked. I remember looking at the table, the artwork, the way every card connected to another card in a web of relationships: the Judge works well if you also have the Courthouse, the Innkeeper loves to bring newcomers, the Farm and Husband and Wife cards create a tiny cycle of life and growth.

It felt alive.

For the first time, a board game didn’t feel like numbers or luck or even simply strategy. It felt meaningful.

I realized that sitting around a table with someone else, building worlds together, could be an act of genuine creativity. And play in the truest sense of the word: play as exploration, discovery and presence.

That realization is what eventually led me to start writing about board games. Which still surprises me.

Where Everdell Lives in My Life Now

I no longer need Everdell to show me what the hobby can be. I’ve explored far beyond it. But I choose to return. Because Everdell feels like the part of myself that remembers:

To breathe slowly. To create instead of consume. To grow things even if no one sees the growth happening. To accept that every season has its closing.

It reminds me that life isn’t built all at once.
It is built in the margins, in the small, persistent acts of placing one tiny meeple after another.

The Lesson the Forest Offers

Everdell taught me that we build our lives the way we build our city on the table:

not perfectly,
not completely planned,
not without missteps,
but with intention,
patience,
and hope.

And when a season ends, whether in the game or in life, it isn’t failure. It is simply the moment to lift your hand from the table, breathe and begin the next one.

I owe the forest an answer for what it gave me.
So I return, from time to time, to sit among the roots and listen.

And I continue building. 🌲