Cascadia is one of the easiest games to get on a table, and it just got a proper sequel. Cascadia: Alpine Lakes, a standalone follow-up from designer Randy Flynn and Flatout Games, takes the Spiel des Jahres 2022 winner and adds a twist the original never had: you can now stack tiles and build your landscape upwards.
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Start organising for freeThe original Cascadia, released in 2021, is a serene tile-and-token puzzle for 1-4 players where you draft habitat tiles and wildlife tokens to build the most harmonious Pacific Northwest ecosystem. That Spiel des Jahres win, board gaming's biggest award, quickly made it a gateway staple. Alpine Lakes keeps the same 30-45 minute, ages-10-and-up accessibility but rebuilds the scoring around five new alpine species across three habitats, with fresh terrains and tokens. The headline change is elevation. You can now layer the double-hex tiles on top of one another, and getting your animals up to the third level or higher earns bonus points. That turns the flat mosaic into a three-dimensional spatial puzzle, and it makes the crowded centre of your countryside much harder to grow and shape.
Because it is fully standalone, you do not need the original to play, though the two can be mixed for a bigger game. Reviewers are already calling it not just a riff on the original but an all-round improvement. Cascadia: Alpine Lakes is due out later in 2026. If Cascadia's calm puzzle is your group's comfort game, this is the excuse to get everyone back around the table, so find a game night near you.
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See how it worksSources: Flatout Games | Meeple Mountain | Wikipedia
