Everdell – Bellfaire: A Festival of Your Own Making

The meadow is alive with anticipation! Everdell – Bellfaire is launching on Steam and mobile platforms this week on Thursday, May 14th, and the valley is about to have its biggest celebration ever! Whether you’re a first-time mayor or a seasoned city planner, let’s take a closer look at the delightful new layers of the upcoming expansion, and how these additions keep the gentle spirit of Everdell intact while offering fresh paths to build, gather, and celebrate.

Prepping Your Party

One of the defining features of Bellfaire is its modular nature. In Everdell Digital, you’ll find these all on the game setup screen, where you can toggle each of the six expansion modules on or off independently. Want a light sprinkle of festivity? Turn on just the Market and the new Forest locations. Want to indulge in some asymmetry without a new board? Turn on the Player Powers and nothing else. Craving the full anniversary party? Flip every switch and watch the valley transform! 

The six modules — Player Powers, the Market, the four new Forest Locations, the nine new Special Events, the Flower Festival Event, and the Garland Awards — mix and match in endless combinations, and can even be toggled with the modules of Glimmergold! With every visit into the virtual valley, you’ll come out with a new story to tell.

Now, let’s settle in by the hearth and take a deeper look at what makes each piece of Bellfaire so special — starting with the one that often steals the show!

Player Powers

Player Powers embody the special gifts of different critters all throughout the valley, granting each player a unique power that they alone can use throughout the game. Before the game begins, each player is dealt two Player Power cards and chooses one to keep. Importantly, when you’re playing with Player Powers turned on, you won’t receive that extra worker at the start of Spring — your chosen critter’s special ability more than makes up for it!

Imagine you draw the Squirrels. Every time you place a worker and gather at least one twig, you snag an extra twig for free. Suddenly, your twig income feels delightfully liquid! This is useful, because Squirrels can also spend 2 twigs to replace 1 resource from the cost of a construction. In a normal game, you might be daft to stockpile a hoard of twigs, but playing as Squirrels, it can open up an entirely new way to play.

Or perhaps you pick Cardinals, whose abundance is not in resources, but cards. Cardinals increase your hand limit by two, and after any card draw (whether from a worker placement or a card effect), you get to draw one extra. In practice, this means you’re rarely stuck staring at an empty hand. Even better, it creates far more opportunities to draw those perfect combinations of paired critters and constructions.

Do you prefer flexibility in your strategy? You may feel compelled to pick the Platypuses. Instead of incentivizing a certain aspect to focus on — such as twigs or card draws — the Platypuses begin with five 1-point tokens, which you can use to gain 1 of any resource as well as a card draw. Tokens you don’t spend are counted as victory points at the end of the game. That’s some nice breathing room if you like to keep your options open!

This is just a drop in the bucket — fifteen delightful Player Powers await in Bellfaire, each one offering its own tactical pathways through the valley!

Fun With Challenges: If you really want to go nuts with Player Powers in Bellfaire, be sure to try the Masquerade challenge! In this scenario, you choose a new Player Power every time you Prepare for Season, but you get one fewer worker in summer! Can you make it work?

The Market: A Bustling Hub of Trade and Timing

When the Market module is toggled on, a brand-new board space opens beside the main meadow. It’s a lively little trading post that adds thoughtful depth without slowing the game. At setup, four Market tokens start on their “gain” side. When you send a worker there (you can only have one of your workers at the Market at a time) you choose: either flip a token to gain its resources and cards, or — if it’s on the “trade” side — pay the listed resources and discard cards to earn three points plus two flexible resources, and then flip it back.

The Market rewards clever timing. Early in Spring you might race to claim a juicy gain token before your opponents. By Autumn, those same tokens have flipped to trade opportunities that turn excess berries or twigs into precious points. Will you race to the Market straightaway for precious resources, or let your opponents get there first so you can take advantage of enticing trade opportunities?

Fun With Challenges: The Supply and Demand challenge specifies that you can send two workers to the Market each season as long as one gains and the other trades. If you want a crash course on how impactful the Market can be, this is a good place to start!

Garland Awards, Flower Festival, and New Special Events: Festive Finishing Touches

The remaining modules sprinkle celebration right into your scoring and play. The Garland Awards module adds one beautifully illustrated endgame tile (drawn at random from seven). At the final bell, the player with the most of a particular category of card earns bonus points. Meanwhile, turn on the Flower Festival and you’ll see a cheerful new Basic Event tile. To claim it, simply have at least one card of each of the five colors in your city and place a worker there. 

With both modules included, this creates some interesting tension: will you go for the Garland Awards and specialize in one color, or will you try to cash in from the Flower Festival by building a diversified city? Is it possible to have your cake and eat it too by achieving both? Or would you rather keep things simple and bring only one of them into your game? The choice is yours!

Finally, the nine new Special Events are wonderfully flexible. You can shuffle them in with the base game Events, giving you a multitude of new strategies to pursue. Together, these modules turn every playthrough into its own little festival!

Fun With Challenges: If you’re feeling festive, try the Awards Show challenge, which removes basic events and replaces them with 4 Garland Awards, requiring you to get first place in at least two of them. Time to be very intentional with the cards that you play!

Everdell – Bellfaire Launches on May 14th

The valley is nearly ready, dear critters! Everdell – Bellfaire releases next Thursday on Steam and mobile platforms with Nintendo Switch to follow later, and we can’t wait to see your cities bloom under the Bellfaire lights! Keep your eyes on the meadow — the party begins soon!