Can you create the best rainforest around? You’ll need to plant flowers, grow them into trees, and attract some of the most iconic forest animals to your various habitats in order to have your rainforest really come to life! Let’s get started.

What Is It?

Drafting – Each round players will draft 2 flower cards (or the first player token which gives them 1 flower of their choice)

Tile Laying – Players will place the flower tiles they draft onto their rainforest boards following various placement rules. They are trying to complete areas with all one color of flower, grow the flowers into trees, and attract animals to the areas

Who Is It For?

  • 1 to 4 Players – I enjoyed it solo because it had a very puzzley nature to it. It’s also good multiplayer, and scales well since you add more cards to the rounds to account for the player count
  • Ages 10 & Up – The rules are fairly straightforward and you don’t need to do much on your turn, so it’s very approachable mechanically. There is definitely some light strategy with how you place your flowers, so it might be good for players who have some experience with other similar style games
  • Fans of family weight games, drafting, and tile placement plus lots of variability

PROS

  • Aesthetics – There isn’t much for art, aside from the box cover, but the game looks great on the table
  • Components – Love the chunky animal tokens. The trees stay together well (and luckily you can store them assembled). The insert works well – Everything is nice quality!
  • Rules are well written and clear
  • Turns/rounds are snappy; gameplay is smooth
  • Good variability with the board set up and ecosystem (extra scoring) cards
    • There’s also various scenarios and challenges players can add in to change things up such as hitting target scores or having the certain numbers of trees/animals
    • There are also modifications players can add to the game to adjust the rules
  • I like that taking the 1st player token still gives players 1 flower so they don’t have to forfeit an action to take 1st player

CONS

  • I wish the areas on the rainforest boards were a little more clearly defined, as I thought they all blended together a bit
    • Similarly, once you put flowers/trees/animals the areas and points get blocked a lot making scoring a little slow
  • I don’t like negative points in any game, and since this game is so approachable for younger and newer gamers, it seems weird that it would be so punishing. I would opt for the family variant to avoid those negatives

Final Thoughts

Overall, I thought this was a fine game. It felt very familiar, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it also means it doesn’t provide me with a unique experience to many other games. I think it is a good gateway game, and does offer some nice variety play to play if you utilize the challenges and such, so if it’s a a style of game/mechanisms you enjoy, it is worth checking out!

Additional Information:
My Final Rating – 6/10

Designers – Asger Harding Granerud,
Daniel Skjold Pedersen
Artist – Vincent Dutrait
Publisher – Sidekick Games, The Op
MSRP – $49.99
Website

*I was provided a copy of this game to do this review*

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