Nature is a competitive game about keeping species alive in a shared ecosystem. A card can increase population, increase size, become a trait or be kept to add food later. The core game runs for four rounds; each round follows preparation, adaptation, feeding and scoring. This walkthrough covers the core 1–4 player game. Modules add their own instructions and a fifth round.

Set up the core game

Put the watering hole in reach, along with plant and meat tokens, population and size dials. Shuffle the Nature cards into a draw deck and keep the separate Hunter cards nearby. Give each player a screen and choose a starting player with the snow leopard marker. The box also contains a solo rulebook; use it when playing against the automated opponent rather than treating solo as an ordinary multiplayer setup.

Draw a Nature card to set the plant supply per round. Multiply the food number in its bottom corner by the number of players and tuck that card under the watering hole as a reminder. On your first game the publisher recommends a card showing 3. For example, a 3 in a three-player game means nine plants are added at the start of each round. Unused plants at the hole stay there for the next preparation.

1. Preparation: plants, new species, cards

Add the fixed plant amount to the watering hole. Each player gains a new species at size 1 with one population, forager side up. Add population killed or starved during the previous round to this new species. If a species went extinct, its lost size also goes onto the new species, subject to the dial’s maximum of 4 in the core game. Those losses do not restore the extinct species that was removed.

Each player draws five Nature cards. Cards retained from earlier rounds stay in hand; there is no maximum hand size. Round 1 has no previous losses to carry forward.

2. Adaptation: one turn each

Starting with the snow leopard player, each player takes one adapting turn. You can play as many cards as you like during that turn, using actions repeatedly and in any order:

• Population: discard any card to add one population to one species. A larger population can score more food, but it must be fed.
• Size: discard any card to raise one species’ size by one on its dial. Core dials stop at 4. Size affects foraging, hunting and defense.
• Trait: play a card face down above a species. It becomes its named trait when all players finish adapting and traits are revealed. A species may have at most three traits, including Hunter.

As a free adapting action, add a Hunter card to a species (one Hunter per species) and flip its dial to the hunter side. That species can no longer forage for plants. You may also remove traits to make room; returning a Hunter card flips its species back to a forager. Cards still in hand can be kept for food during feeding or saved for a later round. Reveal all face-down traits after everyone has adapted.

3. Feeding: take repeated turns

Beginning with the snow leopard player and moving clockwise, each feeding turn follows an order: feed one hungry species if possible; otherwise starve one hungry population; if you have no hungry population, pass. Keep going until every population has been fed or killed and everyone has passed. You cannot simply pass to avoid a feeding action you can take.

A forager takes plants from the shared watering hole equal to its size plus applicable traits, limited by plants available and its own hungry population. Place each plant on one hungry population. It cannot choose to eat less just to leave plants for someone else, except when food or hungry population runs out.

A hunter needs a legal prey species: its hunt value must at least equal the prey’s defense value, and it must overcome protective traits such as Fast. A successful hunt kills one prey population. The defender chooses which population dies; if it had food, that food returns to the supply. The hunter takes meat from the supply equal to the prey’s size, up to its hungry population. A hungry hunter must hunt if legal prey exists, even if the only legal prey belongs to its owner.

Immediately before a feeding action, you may discard one or more cards from your hand to add the printed food values in plants to the watering hole. You cannot discard a trait already in play this way. If no species can feed, starve one hungry population. A species with its last population killed goes extinct; return its ordinary traits to your hand and carry its dial and lost population to the next round’s new species.

4. Score the round and continue

Move plants and meat on fed population behind the player’s screen. Each food token will be one point at game end. Pass the snow leopard marker left and repeat preparation for the next round. After round four, add two points per surviving species to all food points; highest score wins. The scoring guide works through an example and the tie-break.

First-game mistakes to avoid

• A larger population does not automatically score; each unit needs food each round.
• Hunter is a trait slot and stops that species from foraging.
• A killed, previously fed population loses its food token.
• Lost population and extinct size go to the next new species, not any existing survivor.
• With a module, use its setup and five-round game length.

Read Nature strategy once the turn structure makes sense. Rules source: NorthStar’s English core rulebook, checked October 3, 2026. Follow specific trait and module text when it overrides a general rule.