No need for a cutting remark…
SUCCULENT
Designer: J. Alex Kevern | Publisher: Renegade Studios
This reviewer has a soft spot for gardening games. Any time you place us in a gardening plot full of attractive flowers and plants, we’re already smiling. It works for us on the principle that whatever happens in the game, we’re all going to be looking at an attractive board at the end of it. Enter Succulent, which may be more muted than some gardening games, but has all the pleasures of a really nicely maintained courtyard.
From the creator of Gold West and last year’s Artsee, a set of gardeners is tasked with collecting together cuttings to complete gardening projects. The most prolific or successful gardener (i.e. point from the project cards) is the winner. Cuttings are taken by placing Tetris-shaped tiles out into the garden plots, with the flower beneath shown in a holes cut in the board. The player takes the cuttings and places a (double-thickness carboard) flower of their colour into the tile to designate it as theirs.
Players also take a greenhouse board, each different from one another. In this you play droplets, accrued from placing adjacently to already-owned flowerbeds, or from the flowers directly. Eventually you’ll start buying project cards which range from big points to end-game scorers. The interesting part of the project market is they also offer you a way to get more garden tiles – place your player marker on the card and get the tiles shown. If that card is bought by anyone, you get a large, non-discardable droplet for use in the greenhouse.
The board expands from the initial right-side up board to others as the droplet markers on the board disappear. Once gone another of the six boards are flipped and the game continues – sort of like you’re slowly conquering neighbouring allotments.
It’s a game that’s simply more complicated to explain than play. In fact, the project cards are extremely good at teaching you know the kind of things you’ll find valuable later. Do you want to attempt to create a number of small, independent gardens? Or maybe use the most three-tiled flowerbeds? In the end however, your scoring will be mercilessly tight. Of all of the test games we played, winning was achieved by a matter of one or two points, in one case, a half point kept it away from a draw. This tightness is what keeps the game moving throughout, as you’re always nudging against one another’s borders. There’s little in the way of conflict, but there’s always the chance that you’re going to end up helping your fellow gardeners more than hinder them. As such, it’s the kind of greenfingered grudge we all like to hold between the allotments.
CHRISTOPHER JOHN EGGETT
WE SAY
As green-fingered games go, Succulent offers depths beyond the normal tile layer and a component quality well beyond what most modern games offer. An excellent excuse to get out in the garden.
WHAT'S IN THE BOX?
► 8 Garden plots
► 68 Flower beds
► 54 Droplets
► 50 Cuttings tokens
► 36 Project cards
► 4 Greenhouse boards
► 4 Gardener pawns
► 56 Flowers
► 1 Rulebook
TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED QUEENZ…
While not quite a beautiful, Succulent goes at least as far down the garden path as Queenz and achieves just as much gameplay wise.