Description

The mechanic of the game is similar to the card game Rummy - on each turn the player picks up a card, either the top card from the deck or the top card from the discard pile, and then the player discards a card. Once a player has a complete family they must lay it down on the table.

In addition there are three other types of card with various properties. These are protection measures, conservation actions and threats. These can be played at any stage of the game during a players own turn.

Threats can be played against the families laid down by other players and will either destroy a whole family or only take one or more chicks depending on the type of threat. Threats include cats and dogs, rats, stoats and weasels, long line fishing, plastic waste, developers, infertility and virus. Protection measures are laid down on families on the table and they protect against some of the threats. Conservation actions allow a variety of different actions such as exchanging cards with other players, picking up an additional cards and neutralizing threats.

Each round finishes when one player goes out by playing all the cards in their hand onto the table. Points are scored for going out, for each bird in the families on the table and for having protection measures in place on those families. Minus points are scored for having threat cards remaining in a players hand when the round ends. A game ends after a set number of rounds or when a player reaches a set points target.