Coexist – Nature Management with a Conscience

Coexist puts you in charge of a wildlife conservation centre. It sounds peaceful at first, almost idyllic. But once you get going, you realise it’s more about tough choices, tight space, and trying to do the right thing with what little you’ve got. Your job is to take in endangered animals, care for them properly, and eventually release them back into the wild. That’s the goal, anyway. In practice, it’s rarely that straightforward.

You’ll need to manage a team, watch your reputation, and make decisions that aren’t always easy. Do you help another animal even though you’re at capacity? Do you push your reputation to its limits for a quick benefit? The theme is strong here, and it asks you to find a balance between practicality and ethics. You’re running a place that’s trying to do good, but it turns out doing good is complicated.

👥 2-4 players, ages 10+
⌛ Playing time: 30 minutes
📝 Designers: Karim Joulak & Sylvain Philippon
🎨 Artwork: A-MO

🏢 Publisher: Matagot (preview copy provided)
Check out the Gamefound campaign by clicking here

Gameplay Overview

The game is played over a series of turns, continuing until someone manages to release five animals or when the last card from the draw pile is revealed. Once that happens, everyone finishes the round so all players have had the same number of turns.

On your turn, you choose one of three actions: mission, conservation centre, or training.

You can go to the mission board, where you either recruit caretakers or house animals. If you recruit, you discard the caretaker cards on the board and take matching tokens to place in your centre. These tokens go into free spaces or onto spots already occupied by caretakers of the same type. If you house animals instead, you move one or more into your centre, as long as their total capture value doesn’t go over your hosting limit. That limit is based on your reputation, which is something you’ll want to watch closely. The more survival tokens you gain, the more it restricts how many animals you can bring in.

You can also choose to work inside your conservation centre. This is where you assign caretakers to animals, shift your team around, or place animals in the common protected area. That last one gives you useful bonuses but comes at a cost. Once an animal is moved there, it can’t be released into the wild anymore. Instead, you place survival tokens on your reputation track, which reduce your hosting capacity and end-game scoring. It can be tempting when you need the bonus, but it’s definitely not something you want to overdo.

If an animal has all the required caretakers, you can release it into the wild. This is the ideal outcome. You score points based on the animal’s conservation value, remove some survival tokens, and gain a card effect. Some give you a one-time benefit, others provide ongoing powers that can really shift how you play.

From your second turn onwards, you also unlock the training option. This lets you exchange unassigned caretakers using the ratios shown on your training card. Depending on what you have and what you need, you can swap one token for another, or trade in two of one type to get something more specialised. It seems like a small thing at first, but being able to reshuffle your team can save your entire strategy.

Once someone releases their fifth animal or the draw pile runs out, the final round is triggered. After everyone has taken the same number of turns, you count up the points. You score for the animals you’ve released, any visible reputation bonuses, and your biome’s specialty condition. That last one adds a nice bit of flavour, rewarding you for leaning into your centre’s focus. Whether it’s forest, sea, savannah, or air, each biome has its own way to rack up a few extra points if you’ve played it right.

Game Info

Coexist is the debut design from Karim Joulak and Sylvain Philippon, brought to life by Matagot and developed in collaboration with the French environmental non-profit HISA. It plays with 2 to 4 players, runs about 30 minutes, and is recommended for ages 10 and up.

The game launches as a crowdfunding campaign on Gamefound starting May 20th. What’s unique here is that part of the proceeds go directly to support HISA’s biodiversity projects, and the campaign includes a fifth player expansion themed around the organisation’s real-world conservation work. It’s not just a game about nature, it’s one that actively gives back to it.

Adding a strong visual punch is French street artist A-MO, whose signature “paintag” style, a mix of tagging and animal portraiture, brings the endangered species in the game to life with a kind of wild, urgent beauty. This is his first board game project, and it definitely stands out.

Components, Artwork and Production

We played Coexist using a prototype, and even at this early stage, the presentation already feels tight. The component design has clearly been thought through, with each part of the game doing its job without fuss. Everything has its place, and almost nothing feels tacked on or decorative for decoration’s sake.

The art deserves a bit more attention. A-MO’s bold and expressive style doesn’t just decorate the game, it sets the tone. Every species card features a real animal from one of the four biomes: forest, sea, savannah or air. Instead of polished nature documentary illustrations, you get something raw, textured and a little untamed, a good match for the message behind the game.

The icons and symbols are tidy and easy to follow, which makes the cards quick to read without any fuss. The cards themselves are straightforward and do exactly what they need to do, but if you’re curious about the animals, the rulebook adds a bit of extra depth with real-world information. It’s a quiet addition, but one that makes the theme feel more grounded and relevant. There’s colour coding for biomes and caretaker types, and the use of shapes and symbols makes it friendly for younger and colorblind players. Even the first player token, a little black paw print, feels like it belongs on the table.

One small thing we appreciated: the game has a strong visual presence, but it doesn’t sacrifice usability for looks. It’s colourful, but never messy. If anything, it might be one of the rare games where the art actually helps you play better.

Now, onto the one slightly scruffier part, the rulebook. We used a prototype version, and while it covers the basics well enough, it could use a few improvements. The structure makes sense overall, but some rules would really benefit from examples or diagrams. The translation feels a bit stiff in places, and certain terms could be explained with more clarity. It’s far from unreadable, but a bit more polish would go a long way in helping new players get started more smoothly.

How It Plays

In terms of weight, Coexist sits nicely in the light to medium category. It doesn’t overwhelm you with rules, but it also doesn’t play itself. After a turn or two, most players will know what they’re doing. And thanks to the clean icon system and intuitive layout, you won’t be reaching for the rulebook much once you get into the rhythm.

At its heart, the game combines set collection, resource management, and action selection, with a light twist of spatial planning. You’re juggling a small team, limited space, and a growing number of animals that need attention and ideally, release. And that’s where the real tension lies. The big question is never what to do, but when to do it.

You’ll often find yourself with difficult choices: do you place an animal in the protected area to clear space and get a bonus, even though it’ll cost you reputation? Or do you wait, hoping to get just the right caretaker tokens to do things the proper way? Either way, you’ll feel the pressure of limited space and time. You can’t save every animal, and the game doesn’t let you forget that.

Each turn is simple on the surface, three main actions to choose from, but knowing when to take each one is the challenge. You’re constantly measuring small sacrifices against long-term benefits. And somehow, the theme makes those decisions hit a little harder. There were moments when a player hesitated before making a move, not because of strategy, but because it felt wrong to abandon an animal. That’s rare in a board game.

Player Count and Pacing

In our plays, one thing became clear right away: the game flows easily. Most players picked up the structure within a round or two, and turns moved quickly thanks to the focused action choices. No one sat around waiting too long, but decisions still felt meaningful.

With three players, the game felt balanced and brisk. You had just enough competition without things getting too chaotic. Two-player games were a bit more tactical and quiet, like a strategic stare down in a tiny nature reserve. Four-player games were livelier, though the pace naturally slowed a little with more players taking their turns. It didn’t drag, but you do notice the longer wait between your actions. The tempo shifts depending on the number of players, but the game holds together comfortably across all counts.

The conservation centre board itself creates a steady sense of tension. There’s never quite enough room, and you’re often forced to compromise. We had multiple moments where someone placed an animal in the protected area not because they wanted to, but because they simply had no other choice. It wasn’t ideal, but it was necessary. And that, strangely enough, makes the game feel grounded. It mirrors the kind of decisions that conservation work might actually involve.

Final Thoughts

Coexist is a thoughtful and well-composed game with a clear message, but it doesn’t hit you over the head with it. The environmental theme is woven into the gameplay in a way that feels natural, not forced. You’re not being lectured, you’re being asked to make decisions with consequences, and that’s far more effective.

It’s an easy recommendation for families, casual groups, or anyone who prefers calm but engaging gameplay with a purpose behind it. The low rules overhead makes it friendly for mixed experience groups, and the visual design helps it flow naturally.

Of course, it’s not without a few small flaws. The prototype rulebook could definitely use clearer examples and smoother phrasing, especially for first-time players. And while the card draw introduces a bit of randomness, the game mostly rewards timing and planning over luck.

We found three players to be the sweet spot, offering a solid mix of interaction and breathing room. But no matter the player count, Coexist leaves you with something to think about. When the game ends, you’ll likely glance at the animals you didn’t manage to release and feel a small sting. It’s not guilt exactly. More like a quiet nudge that you were trying to do something meaningful, even in a game.

And that’s the trick this game pulls off. It makes you care, just enough. Which, let’s be honest, is more than you can say about most cardboard.

📝 We received a prototype copy of the game from Matagot for the purposes of this review.