ATIWA (Atewa range in english, named after the so called the Atiwa-Atwaredu ranges), the new game by successful author Uwe Rosenberg, takes us to a farm in Ghana in West Africa.
Atewa Range in southeastern Ghana is a huge forest reserve with 17,400 ha of evergreen forest, which is rare even for Ghana. There are also mineral resources here, such as gold, diamonds, white alumina and bauxite. But that is not what this game is about.
As a family of fruit farmers, the players learn that fruit bats - once scorned and hunted as mere fruit thieves - are in fact incredibly useful animals. Although the nocturnal animals continue to eat fruit from the trees, they also spread the seeds over large areas of the country. That way, they help to reforest fallow land and - in the medium term - improve harvests. This realization has led to a symbiotic cooperation between fruit bats and fruit farmers. The animals are kept as "pets" to increase the size of fruit farms more quickly. Tall trees are left as roosts, providing shelter for them rather than hunting them for their scant meat. However, if you have a lot of fruit bats, you need a lot of space...
The perfect balance between flying foxes (another common name for fruit bats) and the growth of the farm is the key to success and thus victory in this classic worker placement game!
Good to know: A single colony of 150,000 fruit bats can contribute to the reforestation of 800 ha of forest within a year!
