Meadowvale: Wildlife Movement
Meadowvale: Wildife Movement
One of the later additions to the rules was the introduction of movement. Originally, Meadowvale was a static puzzle: a tile and token–laying game with scoring that was derived from real animal behaviour.
The idea of movement came during a playtest when someone said: “Wouldn’t it be good if the fox could chase the rabbit?”
First Experiments
I had a to carefully put this in place because the game was playing well as it was. And I have also avoided any playing out of ‘hunting’ or conflict’, the end state of the board being an ecological balance. So I didn’t want foxes chasing and capturing rabbits. Movement had to be embedded into the feel of the game.
The first step was to give animals a maximum number of hexes they could move. Owls had the longest range, for example. Again, movement was informed by ecology.
Because I still wanted to retain the idea of a board state at the end of the game, a map that was built gradually, movement couldn’t disrupt that completely. If it was limited, though, it could allow for subtle shifts to disrupt, block, or create new interactions. The extent to which strategy was unlocked was unexpected. A nice surprise!
Ecological Stories
The idea that little ecological stories were playing out quickly emerged.
The fox chased the rabbit into the hedgerow.
The owl moved perch for a different line of sight after the vole had moved.
A hedgehog shuffled along hedgerows between shelters.
These weren’t abstract moves, they were nature stories, played out on the board.
This narrative layer has became a turning point in design, allowing Meadowvale to be seen not just as a strategy game, but as a worldbuilding exercise: small-scale, quiet, and alive. More on this in a later blog!
Strategy: Timing and Planning
Movement also brought in the idea of timing. Movement could be reactionalry. It could be used to adjust scoring if the board evolved in an unexpected way. And, players could set up pieces so that they could be moved later, disguising scoring patterns until it was too late for others to react.
That single change added a new strategic layer: planning when to move became as important as where to place.
Paying for Motion
Of course it couldn’t be a free for all, the number of moves had to be limited. I had already been using a system of wildflower tokens that allowed discard and redraw of tiles and tokens. So the first iteration of the rule was to use a token to pay for a move.
You start with a hand of 3 wildflowers (capped at 3), and you gained more by drawing and placing a wildflower meadow tile. I love it when new ways of playing unexpectedly rise from a small change. In this case, players started hanging on to meadows they drew, banking them until they needed to replenish. The trade-off was clear: slower tile cycling, but the ability replenish you tokens if you used one to move.
Why It Matters
The introduction of movement changed Meadowvale completely. It turned the board from a static puzzle into a living ecosystem. It gave players tools to adjust, disrupt, and plan, while keeping the landscape intact as a story at the end of the game.
Most importantly, it gave life to the folklore of the Vale: the fox chasing, the rabbit darting, the owl watching.
- Chris
