Tents and Trees is a relaxing puzzle game for Nintendo Switch by Frozax Games. It strongly resembles Sudoku, but instead of numbers, you fill the field with tents and grass.

How to pitch a tent

The rules of the game are simple. You get a grid with several trees and you have to place a tent next to each tree, either horizontally or vertically. The tents cannot touch each other, not even diagonally. Next to each column and row, there is a number that indicates how many tents you can place in that row or column. When you think that there cannot be a tent in a certain spot, you can fill it with grass. The process of filling out the grid is similar to playing Sudoku. You go from the easiest and most obvious places and filling them will allow you to deduce the harder spots.

On Switch, you can play the game either with joy-cons or on a touch screen. Sadly, both of these methods have some shortcomings. When using touch controls, you can fill out all empty spaces in a row (or a column) with grass with one tap, if you have the corresponding number of tents placed in that row. Especially on larger grids, it’s very helpful because you don’t have to go through multiple fields one by one. You just tap on the number next to the row and it gets done. But with joy-cons you can only move inside of the grid and there is no way how to get to the numbers around the borders of the grid. So if you play in docked mode, you are missing out on this feature. 

On the other hand, the touch controls have some issues in places where there are a lot of trees clumped together. The game has a mechanic where you can link a tent and a tree so it’s easier to see which tree is already occupied. But I found that using touch controls, this link is sometimes hard to create and I either gave up on linking the tents with trees or switched to using joy-cons to create the links. But overall I preferred the touch controls, because it’s just much quicker than navigating the field with joysticks.

Neverending story

The game contains ten tutorial levels and then 500 levels in classic packs. If that isn’t enough, there is a steady stream of around 20 daily levels. Each day you have access to the levels for that day and also to levels for the previous day if you didn’t play them.

I was able to quickly breeze through the first 50 classic levels. You start playing on a 5x5 grid and once you grasp the basic concepts of the game, it takes not even a minute to complete the initial levels. Perfect when you can’t commit to a longer playing session. But don’t be mistaken, the game gets progressively more difficult. The playing field can get up to 14x14 size, trees are placed in more complex patterns and sometimes the numbers next to some rows and columns are missing. And it feels really rewarding when you manage to beat more complex levels without using any hints.

Though I have to say that I love the hint system in this game. It doesn’t simply tell you where to place a tent. It also explains the logic behind the placement so you can figure it out next time on your own. Many games utilize hints almost as a skip button, as if they were saying “Just put it here and move on, quickly!”. But in Tents and Trees, the hints system really helped me learn some advanced strategies of the game.

The game has simple, yet very polished and nice graphics, and enjoyable, relaxing music. You can unlock more themes and music tracks by beating a certain number of levels. Right now there are 6 music tracks and 4 themes and you have to beat 500 levels to unlock everything.

Public campsite

The game also features co-op with up to 4 players. But in all honesty, I can’t see a potential for it in a puzzle game like this. There is no innovation to include the other player, no special levels or obstacles, there is just one more person messing with the same field as you. So for me personally, having other players in this game felt more like a hindrance, where you either do not cooperate or are taking unnecessary time to explain your thought process. The co-op mode is also strangely hidden behind the “Configure controllers” button instead of being advertised somewhere on the main screen. So it almost feels like the co-op feature was an afterthought rather than a fully thought-out feature.  

Overall, Tents and Trees is a relaxing game with just the right amount of challenge so it does not feel simple but it’s also not frustratingly hard. You can’t even get stuck in the game thanks to a great hint system that helps you learn and improve your strategy. The steady stream of new levels makes the game highly replayable and, despite some minor issues with controls, it is highly enjoyable. Placing cute little tents between trees and grass is very calming and I would recommend this game to every puzzle lover.