Lovely blooms, floriferous freesias, buzzing bees. There’s no style that I maintain extra dearly within the board gaming world than backyard video games. My recreation room cabinets burst with vivid petal colours and deep leafy greens. Exterior of the sport room partitions, my very own backyard is a patch of barren and uncared for grass with a perpetually half-empty chook feeder plopped within the center, however a lady can aspire. Magnificence in nature is a continuing inspiration for artwork, and board video games are an ideal showcase for an artist’s expertise at capturing this.
Flower Fields, designed by Luca Bellini and Luca Borsa, is a 1-4 participant tile-laying addition to the backyard recreation style. It’s vivid, daring, and floral, completely complementing the opposite backyard video games in your cabinets. The query is, with so many different choices obtainable, whether or not this recreation has something new or spectacular to offer in a properly seeded subject.
Gameplay Overview:
Performed over three seasons, the aim of Flower Fields is to create probably the most lovely backyard format, full of huge sections of flowers in every shade. Gamers earn factors by matching flower tile colours on their very own tableau to create massive polyomino groupings, with bonus factors for every of the bees visiting these flowers.
Every participant will get their very own board, and all participant boards needs to be oriented in the identical course. A central board accommodates 4 coveted small tiles, round which massive tiles are drawn from a bag and organized in a circle, the quantity relying on the variety of gamers. A solar token marks the start of the circle, and every spherical ends when the circle of tiles is depleted.
Beehive icons proven in your participant board and the tiles you choose generate extra bees for you on the finish of every spherical, however spiderweb icons subtract out of your complete. Managing an efficient bee economic system is crucial to gameplay. Bees could be spent to maneuver the solar token ahead across the tile circle to pick out a extra fascinating token, to buy small tiles from the central market, and, most significantly, they are often positioned in your board for an end-game level modifier. Every bee in a shade part multiplies the purpose complete for that part when the board is scored.
Bees can solely be positioned on tiles that present their silhouettes, and the extra bees you might have already in a piece the extra it prices so as to add to their quantity. For those who don’t plan thoughtfully on your bee engine within the first spherical, you’ll wrestle to catch up all through the remainder of the sport.
Tiles depict single sections, double sections, and half sections. On the finish of the ultimate spherical, every part in your largest cluster of every shade is summed and multiplied by the variety of bees in that cluster. The one that has most successfully managed their bee economic system turns into gardener supreme.
Sport Expertise:
The gameplay is pretty easy to know should you’ve performed every other tile-laying recreation. Match up sections, rely up factors. There may be some room for technique by the position of beehives. Your board begins with a set quantity exhibiting, and should you cowl these up as you lay tiles, you’ll wrestle to have the sources you want later within the recreation. As a substitute, it’s important to thoughtfully choose which tiles you wish to draft based mostly on which of them have bee or beehive icons, and which colours you’re hoping to extend in rating.
The best way the sections are damaged up on the tiles is a bit distinctive, however we discovered the half squares to be extra of a ache than an considerable problem to our methods. In most video games, it was clear throughout the first spherical who the entrance runner was, and should you haven’t set your bee economic system up correctly within the first few turns you’ll probably wrestle for the remainder of the sport.
What makes this recreation bloom in a crowded subject of flower titles is the extra mature shade palette. I used to be reminded of William Morris tiles for the artwork aesthetic, and my associate’s interpretation leaned extra in the direction of 1970’s kitchen home equipment. Both manner, the wealthy jewel tones used are pleasing to the attention, and it units the sport aside from others in the identical thematic class.
Extra wilting are the bee tokens, that are solely display printed on one facet. We normally play on a black desk, and the clean black bees constantly blended in with the tabletop. For basically an important part within the recreation, this value reducing measure had a unfavorable affect on our expertise.
Last Ideas:
For those who can’t get sufficient of polyomino video games, Flower Fields is a tidy addition to the mechanical style. It doesn’t have any significantly difficult or revolutionary gameplay twists, and it’s solidly playable. For those who like thematic backyard video games, it’s one of many prettiest launched in 2024. However should you’re searching for one thing new and thrilling in both of these areas, you received’t discover it right here.
Last Rating: 3 Stars – Fairly and playable, however nothing you haven’t seen earlier than
Hits:
• Refined shade palette and floral artwork
• Strategic with out being mentally taxing
• Fast to study and train
Misses:
• Display screen printing on just one facet of bee tokens is a ache
• Half tiles are extra of ache than a boon to gameplay
• Each thematically and mechanically generic, with out a lot to set it aside
