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Quick Look: Glass Garden
Designer: Roshni Patel
Artists:Kwanchai Moriya
Publisher: Button Shy
Year Published: Currently on Kickstarter (link at the bottom of this review)
Terrariums are works of living art, lush worlds cradled within glass walls. Use care to cultivate and protect your fragile environment.
Caring for a terrarium takes time and energy, even without a pesky critter chewing on your hard work! Take care of your freshly-planted succulents by moving them around to develop the resources they need. As the critter advances, it wreaks havoc on your miniature garden. Limit its damage while still growing your plants as high as you can manage to earn the title of Master Gardener!
Your garden consists of 8 Plant cards (and 1 of the 4 possible Critter cards) bounded by Glass cards to create a 3×9 grid of spaces. On each turn, you can move up to 2 plants vertically and/or horizontally to form bundles of resources in fertile zones, the areas where two rows meet. Each plant needs a different set of resources to grow out of the soil, but once those needs are met they can be flipped to their grown side which provides additional resources as well as immediately triggering a useful ability. Plants grown along one of the edges also flip the neighboring Glass card to its Sunlight side, granting the player additional moves at the end of the game. Lastly, the critter moves 1 space to the right and then damages specific plants in your garden, lowering them by 1 row. Once the critter reaches the far wall, the game ends. Take any Sunlight moves available, then score points for each grown plant’s height to find out whether your terrarium is a dirty dud or a thriving masterpiece.
Note: This review is based on a demo copy of the game and may not reflect changes to the final version of the game.
Review:
Overview:
One of the best parts of gaming for me is the interaction with my fellow players, both in game and out of game. It’s not that I don’t play 1-Player games, just that I will seek out multiplayer games first. This means that a 1-Player version of a game needs to really get my attention for me to try them, and Glass Gardens did just that. I was a little concerned at how few components there were, but once I was able to set up and try the game, I found the game had all that it needed. The game provides a thinky experience without being overly complicated. If you like puzzle solving or programming games, I think you will greatly enjoy Glass Garden.
The rule book provides a good deal of information for so few components, but this is needed because the game is more complex than it looks. The rules provide examples and explain potential misunderstandings. The final version should be well done.
Note: Since this was a demo game it is likely the rule book was not in its final form.
The setup is super simple. The 8 plant cards are shuffled, dirt side up, and placed in a row. You pick one of the garden pests to include, ranging from easy to very hard, and place it at the left of the plant card row. You then place the 3 left glass jar cards in a column at the left end of the row and the 3 right glass jar cards in a column at the right end of the row. That’s it; the game begins.
In Glass Garden you are attempting to grow a garden in a terrarium. You make decisions about what to attempt to grow or utilize when to make your garden grow the best. Like all gardens, you also have to deal with pests that can cause issues and may try to harm your garden.
The mechanic of the game is several rounds of performing a set of actions. Each round you make up to 2 move actions, grow your plants, apply pest effects and finally set up for the next round.
The game is played over 9 rounds. Each round you perform a set of 4 actions, which are defined on the Critter (pest) card. You begin each round by taking up to 2 move actions based on the criteria on the Critter card. Once you have made your moves, you attempt to grow plants based on the card tags you have next to each other. If you grow a plant, you perform the indicated action. After that, the pest damages plants based on their abilities. Finally, the Critter card is flipped and moved one space forward. Once the Critter card reaches the end of the row, one final Sunlight phase is performed and the game is over. Your garden is scored and you can determine how well you did based on the provided table.
The game play feels like growing plants. You start with seeds, try to tend to them in hopes they will grow. Watching some bud before others. And hoping your garden will grow to it’s best by the end of the growing season.
Blue versus Green cards. It became clear fairly quickly that you can’t grow any of the Green cards right off, you need to grow one or two of the Blue cards before you can start to grow the Green cards. Some may get frustrated by this apparent lack of choices, but it is thematically correct, without nutrients or water, you can’t grow plants.
I was a little skeptical at first that a game with so few components could provide the level of gameplay I like; was I wrong? My first game I did very poorly. I thought it was because I didn’t understand the game or maybe I missed something in the rules. My second game wasn’t any better. Then I realized I was underestimating the game and wasn’t playing it with real thought or intent. As I continued playing I was able to improve by making better decisions while planning my moves. You really have to look 2-3 turns ahead to really do well, but which path to take, and maybe next round you see something you didn’t the previous round. I found myself being drawn deeper and deeper into the game. I find that I will be playing this game when I have time and want a particularly thinky puzzle to solve that won’t take forever to solve. If you like solving puzzles and trying to optimize paths, I believe you will really enjoy this game.
Players Who Like:Puzzly type games, programming or pathing type games, and solo games
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Thomas Shepherd – Reviewer
Grew up loving to solve puzzles, play games. In younger years he had fun playing pencil games, playing D&D with friends, and hanging out with others. His favorite thing to do was to make puzzles, mazes, word games, picture games, etc. Sadly his career took him in a different direction. Gaming came back into his life, though, about 15 years ago & held onto it since. He enjoys designing games and has 9 published titles, through, Toresh Games. Sadly he wasn’t able to sustain the company. He would love to see a return to games as the best social media platform for the masses.
See Thomas Shepard’s Reviews HERE.