KODAMA 3D
Designer: Daryl Andrews, Erica Hayes-Bouyrouris | Artist: Kwanchai Moriya
Kodama 3D is the latest arrival in the Kodama family, a series of games about building trees – one tree per player, not the groves and forests of Photosynthesis and Bosk.
In the original 2016 game by Daniel Solis you used branching paths of cards, but this new version by the two designers behind Bosk you build the trees by slotting together branches.
Each turn is in two parts: move one of your two kodamas (tree spirits) around a grid of piled-up branches to collect them, then slot the branches together to fulfil the conditions of the goal cards in front of you. Each branch is marked with one of four symbols – flowers, mushrooms, fireflies and caterpillars, plus kodama in various colours – which must be combined or connected within the tree to score you points. More goal cards can be acquired by connecting branches that share no matching symbols.
This part is very visual and satisfying to play. The branches are robustly cut and slot together in interesting ways, the trees become interesting shapes and threaten to topple over but rarely do, and the kodama themselves are colourful and cute. However most of the gameplay is in the grid, which is more strategic but also more abstract and decidedly more 2D.
It didn’t enthrall us. Younger players loved building the trees but found the tactics of acquiring branches dry and occasionally frustrating, while the older ones were the other way around. There was some confusion about whether you’re allowed to attach multiple subbranches to a parent branch, which the rules don’t cover or illustrate.
It’s fun enough but nobody was shouting to play it again, and it lacks the tone and sense of place that Bosk achieves so well. The 3D element, while visually exciting, doesn’t add much to the gameplay. All in all, it’s a bit take-it-or-leaf-it.
JAMES WALLIS