Cascadia is one of my all-time favorite games—a breezy tile-layer I find delightful. For the upcoming Cascadia: Rolling Rivers and Cascadia: Rolling Hills, Flatout Games and AEG brought back the original team (designer Randy Flynn, illustrator Beth Sobel) and added Fertessa Alysse (development and graphic design) and Dylan Mangini (graphic design). Cascadia: Rolling is what it is says it is: a flip-and-roll-and-write Cascadia game.
Opening the box, my initial reaction to the environment sheets was mild concern. There are a LOT of colors and small icons in this game. Did the team consider low vision and colorblind gamers? Would I be able to play? Read on to find out.
What’s in the Box…es?
Cascadia: Rolling is as much a system as a game, in this way reminding me of Welcome To…, Super-Skill Pinball (CBG review), and Rolling Realms. Each game features four unique sheets for scoring, 30 habitat cards for earning points, and a special die. Owning both games allows for some component mixing-and-matching and expands the max player count from four to eight.
Gameplay
The core mechanism is recipe fulfillment by collecting animals (via dice rolls) and placing them in habitats. It evokes both the theme and mechanisms of Cascadia, and the different environment sheets offer variety in scoring options and difficulty.
Communal dice are available to everyone, while each player has two dice only they can use. This provides similar but non-identical choices, separating Cascadia: Rolling from other roll-and-write games with a shared pool of dice or cards. Players earn nature tokens for dice manipulation, and small completion cards offer discounts or bonuses when placing animals in habitats.
Solo Mode
The base solo game is “beat your own score,” which I found mildly dissatisfying. It was impossible to know if my score each game was any good, due to the variety of the starting setup and lack of scoring targets. It had me wondering about the possibility of a target based on the combination of the environment sheet and habitat cards used, since each card is unique. Naturopolis (CBG review) and Cartographers (CBG review) offer this feature, and I find it useful.
I asked Randy Flynn about this, and he provided some insights:
“We did discuss the possibility of adding target scores like Cascadia, but it just didn’t make the final cut. [To calculate a target score], I think the completion cards would actually be as important or more important than the habitat cards played with. Maybe an enterprising member of the community will tackle it!”
After seeing this discussion, Shawn Stankewich (Flatout Games) added a bit more about scoring targets, referencing achievements from the back of the rulebook:
“There IS sort of a scoring threshold aspect to the solo mode—we baked it into the achievements for each of the sheets in the achievement section. There are 3 score thresholds for each of the different sheets.”
Accessibility Review
Flatout Games has provided solid accessibility for low vision and colorblind gamers in most games, and Cascadia: Rolling maintains that. The box is the small—the same size as 2023’s Point City (CBG review) and Deep Dive (CBG review)—which limits the size of the environment sheets, and therefore the size of everything on them. Within that limitation, the graphic designers did a fantastic job double-coding in both obvious and subtle ways to support those of us with visual limitations.
Dice
Each die face replicates the round tokens from the original Cascadia, with the same art and color scheme. All other iconography is large and clear to read. Excellent all around.
My only minor quibble with the dice is mostly my fault. I often rearranged the dice in my tray after rolling, and due to the rounded corners and lightweight wood material, I bumped them often, requiring me to remember the original value.
Cards
The wildlife icons on the habitat cards are triple-coded: colored background, animal art, and my favorite feature—top-to-bottom position regardless of which and how many are displayed. All gameplay icons are large and clear, including completion card graphics and text.
Game Sheets
There is a lot going on with each environment sheet, which made me nervous at first. I shouldn’t have worried—the graphic designers provided double-coding for all game elements.
- Habitat illustrations match those from Cascadia, providing a familiar set of colors and designs.
- The new Sun and Rain Cloud icons were easy to distinguish from all other icons and from each other.
- On the Palouse sheet shown here, I initially had trouble distinguishing rivers hexes from mountains, and wetlands from plains. Once I learned that the mountains were grouped together AND the group included a mountain landmark icon, everything was easy to see.
Overlapping Icons. I experienced one issue that required some accessibility support. For the animals icons that are partially covered (see the top-left group on this Palouse sheet), I sometimes mixed up the elk and fox. Zooming in with my phone helped, but another millimeter or two of separation to reduce overlap would’ve given my brain what it needed to distinguish the icons.
Conclusion
Cascadia: Rolling Rivers and Cascadia: Rolling Hills evoke the original game in a small box, while introducing new mechanisms. I recommend it for anyone who loves Cascadia and all roll-and-write fans. For low vision and colorblind players, the team did a great job caring for our needs.
The Cascadia: Rolling crowdfunding campaign starts soon, and you can access everything you need here!
Disclaimers and Image Credits
- Colorblind Games received a pre-release prototype copy of both games from the publisher for this review. Each is close to final, but the published version may included a few edits and changes.
- The author has served as a volunteer playtester and rules editor for several Flatout Games and AEG titles, including the original Cascadia (see About Me for details).
- Image Credits: Box art and bottom image: Flatout Games/AEG. All others: Brian Chandler.
Colorblind Games 