Components

• The player with most nuts at the end of the game wins.
• Stamina is what you use to play squirrels. You can not have more than 5 stamina. Any stamina you gain when your bar is full will instead give you 1 nut each.
• Coins are mainly used to play items. You can use 3 coins to pay for 1 stamina.
• The player who has the first player token will start playing each new day.

Gameplay

You begin the game and each new day with a morning phase. All players will collect resources simultaneously. What resources to collect is shown on the Island board for each day. After the morning phase you begin taking turns around the table.

Details

Actions on your turn

• On your turn, when you are awake, you play one card from either your hand or the Island, paying its cost. If you do not play a card you instead go to sleep.
• When you play from the island, you must pay an additional cost of either 1 stamina or 1 coin. This cost is not dependent on the type of card you play.
• When it is your turn you can also choose to go to sleep. The current day continues until everyone is asleep.

• When you are asleep you may gather 1 nut if you exhaust any 1 of your squirrels.
• When everyone is asleep on day 1-3, the next day starts with a morning phase, where every player gains resources, as depicted on the island board.
• When all players have gone to sleep on the fourth and final day, the game ends. Instead of starting a new day you will now add your stashed nuts to your collection. Reveal your stashed cards and add the combined stash value from them together with the nuts you have gathered to see your final score. The player with most nuts wins the game! In case of a tied score the tied player with most squirrels wins. If it is still a tie the residents of Squirrel Island consider you equally worthy to be known as champions!

Playing a card

• If you play a card, you place it on the table, and then resolve the play effect. Some squirrels have abilities, they are not part of this effect, but are triggered at specific moments during the game.
• Most squirrels have one or more so called loops that you will collect each morning phase. The symbol inside the loop shows what resource you will gain 1 of when you collect that loop. You can also play cards that let you collect loops from squirrels if you exhaust them.

Effects

• Squirrels can be either refreshed or exhausted. A squirrel is always refreshed after you play it and all squirrels become refreshed at the start of each new day. To exhaust a squirrel you rotate the squirrel card sideways to show that it is exhausted. An exhausted squirrel does not give you its abilities. To refresh a squirrel that has been exhausted, you rotate it back up. You can not exhaust or refresh other players squirrels unless it is specifically stated.
• The unique squirrels have unique abilities instead of loops. These abilities either activate when you do something specific on your turn or they have an ongoing effect that only applies to you. If the squirrel is exhausted you do not have its unique ability. The unique abilities that activates on your turn does not activate during the morning phase. The unique squirrels play effect can activate its own ability. The unique abilities are not optional.
• Some effects will tell you to stash a card. This means you tuck the card face-down, halfway under your player mat. All cards have a stash value in the bottom right corner which indicates how many nuts the card will give you at the end of the game if it has been stashed. The stashed cards remain stashed until the end of the game. You are not allowed to peek at what you have stashed while playing. When you stash a card from the top of the deck you do not look at it. If you would stash a card from your hand you choose which one to stash.
• If a card tells you to Go again! you will take another turn instead of passing the turn. This new turn works just like a normal turn where you can play a card or go to sleep and gather 1 nut. If you get more than one instance of Go again! you will take that many more turns, even if you go to sleep.
• There are some cards with effects that have white text on a red background, these are called sabotage effects. This is only to show that it affects the other players.

Auto-exhaust squirrel when asleep

The Boardgamearena implementation allows for auto-exhausting squirrels when asleep. You have 3 options.

1. Always manually choose what squirrel to exhaust when you are asleep.
2. Exhaust squirrels in a specific order when you are asleep. A specific algorithm decides which squirrel to decide first. Below, the algorithm is explained, but you can rely on that this is usually the best strategy for exhausting squirrels.
3. Let the game choose a random squirrel to exhaust when you are asleep.

Auto-exhaust algorithm

When choosing 'specific order', the game will exhaust the squirrel that is highest on this list of demands. First only look at goal 1, if that doesn't result in a single squirrel, move to goal 2.

• GOAL 1: Receive the most valuable resources first (Elite gatherer: 2 nuts, card protected by the Bodyguard: 1 nut, ground and flying squirrels with Twinwatch refreshed: 1 coin/1 card. Exception to subgoals: Twinwatch itself is always the last one to exhaust for goal 1!)
• GOAL 2: Exhaust squirrels with the most valuable loops first

To see which squirrels has the most valuable resources/loops, the following order is used:

• SUBGOAL 1: As many things as possible (for example: 2 loops is always better than 1 loop)
• SUBGOAL 2: As many nuts as possible
• SUBGOAL 3: As many stamina as possible
• SUBGOAL 4: As many coins as possible
• SUBGOAL 5: As many cards as possible

Example 1

Refreshed squirrels: Scout (loops: 1 nut), Adventurer (loops: 1 card, 1 stamina)

First Adventurer (GOAL 2, SUBGOAL 1), then Scout

Example 2

Refreshed squirrels: Elite gatherer (tree squirrel, gain 2 nuts when exhausted, loops: 2 nuts), Twinwatch (flying and ground squirrel, gain 1 coin/card when exhausting flying/ground squirrel, no loops), Thief (ground squirrel, loops: 1 nut), Digger (ground squirrel, loops: 1 stamina)

First Elite gatherer (GOAL 1, SUBGOAL 1), then Thief (GOAL 1 + GOAL 2, SUBGOAL 2), then Digger (GOAL 1), then Twinwatch