Welcome to Everdell

The game setup begins by placing the main Everdell board in the center of the table with the moon token positioned above the green symbol. Sort the wooden resource crates—twigs, resin, and berries—and place them on the board alongside point tokens. Each player receives a personal player board and a matching set of animal friend meeple figures. Shuffle the location and critter cards to form a draw pile next to the board, revealing eight face-up cards underneath. Parade tiles are sorted by category and stacked with the lowest point value at the bottom and highest at the top, placed on the parade path. Finally, the youngest player takes the sun token as the start player, and everyone receives starting materials.

The main objective in Everdell Junior is to help build the Everdell community by constructing a vibrant playground, tolbridge, and village together with your animal friends. Players compete to gather various resources like twigs, resin, and berries, place their animal friends on productive locations, play helpful cards into their personal village, and claim valuable parade tiles to maximize their final victory point total.

A complete game consists of four rounds tracked by the moon and sun tokens. During each round, players roll the dice and place them onto the board to generate resources. Next, all players activate their green buildings and gather any associated yields. Then, starting with the start player, everyone takes turns placing one friend meeple onto a valid space on the main board or their personal card layout to collect matching resources, before purchasing and playing one new card from the market.

Scoring takes place after the fourth round concludes. Players earn one point for every two leftover resources in their possession, while individual resources yield no points. Cards played in player villages and earned parade tiles provide substantial points, with purple cards offering additional bonus points. All values are tallied, and the player with the highest overall score wins the game.

The game concludes automatically at the end of the fourth round once all players have finished placing their final friend meeps and playing their last cards. Friends are returned to player boards, and the final scoring phase begins. After calculating all resource, card, and parade points, the player with the highest total is declared the winner.