Build a home range from 20 microhabitat tiles: 5 each of Food, Refuge, Basking and Mates. Every tile has to touch at least one other tile along a side.
Set your turtle down on any tile you like.
The season is a shuffled stack of cards with equal numbers of each habitat. Each round one card is called.
Move one tile up, down, left or right onto a tile that matches the call. If you are already standing on that habitat, you can stay put.
If there is no matching tile next to you, your turtle is trapped and the game ends. Get through every call to survive the season.
With misses allowed, a trapped turtle can use a life to wait out that round where it is. The season ends when the lives run out.
Settle a landscape
Everyone who uses the same season code gets the same landscape and the same calls.
Rock outcrops can't be crossed or stood on, and the turtle can't leave the landscape.
Choose where to settle, then play the season with the same movement rules. Where you settle, and which way you move when you have a choice, decide how long you last.
Road and culverts (Settle mode)
A road splits the landscape into two sides.
On any turn, instead of a normal move, the turtle can try to cross the road to any tile on the other side that matches the call. A crossing succeeds only some of the time (a coin flip at 50%). A failed crossing ends the season.
A culvert runs under the road. A turtle standing at one end can move safely to the tile at the other end, if that tile matches the call.
Parasites
Each time the turtle steps onto a tile it hasn't visited yet this season, there is a chance it picks up a parasite (roll a die).
Staying put or returning to a tile it has used before carries no risk. Too many parasites and the turtle dies.
Disease
Meeting a new mate can make the turtle sick. A sick turtle can't lay eggs.
To recover, spend two rounds in a refuge or basking spot while sick. They don't have to be the same tile or back to back.
Predators (Settle mode)
Badgers or foxes roam the landscape. Each one threatens its own square and the four squares next to it, outlined in red.
After everyone moves, each predator attacks one turtle in its danger zone: the boldest one. A turtle in a refuge is always safe.
An attack costs a life (or ends the season, if your teacher chose that). A shy turtle shuts its hinged shell and survives its first attack each season. An aggressive turtle can fight back: 4, 5 or 6 on a die drives the predator off, but the turtle is injured.
Then the predators wander. Roll a die for each one: 1 north, 2 east, 3 south, 4 west, 5 or 6 stays put. A fox rolls twice.
Events
Your teacher can turn on events: wildfires, poaching, drought, a new road and more. Each can happen once a season, at a random call, and everyone in the class gets the same events at the same time.
When an event happens, a card pops up saying what happened and what it means for your turtle. Some are good news, some are bad.
Some events make double tiles: a small icon in the corner means the tile also counts as that habitat.