Who doesn’t love a good succulent? Well today we are going to a local garden shop to meet Gretchen and see all of her wonderful small plants. She’s going to help us build the best collection we can and see if ours is the best one of them all!
Gretchen’s Garden is designed by Jay Bendixen and Ryan Boucher. Art by Carrie Cantwell and Nele Diel. It is published by Lookout Games and Asmodee and plays 2-4 players in approximately 45 mins.
Overview:
Gretchen’s Garden is a tableau-building board game for 2 to 4 players in which each player develops a personal collection of succulents and flowerpots over the course of 12 rounds. Players compete to create the highest-scoring collection by acquiring plants and pots, managing water, growing leaves, and producing flowers while adapting to changing weather conditions.
Gameplay:
At the beginning of the game, each player receives a personal display with starting flowerpots, a money plant, and a watering can. A central display holds available succulents and flowerpots that players can acquire throughout the game. The game is played across 12 rounds, with every round consisting of an action phase followed by weather and growth phases.
During a player’s turn they will take one main action. A player may purchase a succulent or flowerpot from the central display by spending leaf tokens produced by their money plant. Newly acquired succulents are planted into empty flowerpots, while newly acquired flowerpots are added to one end of the player’s collection, shifting existing pots as needed to make room. Players may also take a cutting from another player’s succulent if they have an available empty flowerpot, allowing them to add a new plant to their collection.
Another available action allows players to reorganize their collection and distribute stored water among their flowerpots to prepare plants for future growth. If a succulent and its flowerpot share the same color and meet the required conditions, a player may also choose to make that plant bloom. Each flower color is limited, so the timing of this action can affect future opportunities.
After all players have completed their actions, the weather phase takes place. A weather card determines how much water each player receives during that round. Players distribute this water among their flowerpots or store it in their watering cans for later use. Water is required to support plant growth, and different flowerpots have different capacities for storing water as well as different limits on how much a succulent can grow.
Next comes the growth phase. Water contained in flowerpots is converted into new leaves for the succulents growing in those pots. Leaves serve both as a representation of plant growth and as a source of points at the end of the game, while leaves on the separate money plant function as currency for purchasing new plants and flowerpots during future turns. Players continue balancing spending leaves to expand their collections with preserving leaves on scoring plants for final scoring.
Each succulent species scores according to its own criteria. Different species reward different collection patterns or arrangements, encouraging players to build combinations of plants rather than simply collecting as many as possible. Flowerpots also contribute to final scoring, and successfully blooming plants provide additional points. Because every species has distinct scoring requirements, players must consider both the placement of their plants and the types of succulents they collect throughout the game.
The game ends after 12 rounds. Players determine their scores by counting points from leaves on scoring plants, completed flowers, individual succulent scoring effects, and flowerpots in their collections. The player with the highest total score wins the game!
Impressions:
In Gretchen’s Garden, the theme of collecting, planting and taking care of succulents runs well through the whole thing. It’s smooth, and feels like you are actively building your collection of plants over the course of the 12 rounds. Taking care of them and knowing when and how much water they need and the pots they need to go in works well for theme.
For the gameplay, it felt limited in my decision-making as most of the obvious choices were the ones you would make when gaining plants or placing them. I never felt challenged in ways I like to feel in a board game. That being said, it would be a great game for someone who is more excited for the theme then the strategy and for newer gamers it will will be a great fit.
The art and style of the game is great-it’s very cute and fits in the whimsical vibes the game gives off. It’s a coffee shop/chill game that will fit that type of gameplay if you are looking for it. So if succulents are your thing and you are looking for an easy game to play for your next game night, Gretchen’s Garden may be the one you are looking for!
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