If you’re ready to grow your orchard and harvest as much fruit as possible, then you’re ready for GROVE! Do you have what it takes to help these tree grow and product plenty of citrusy goodness? Let’s find out together! (Except, you’re gonna have to go at it alone… it’s a solo game after all … whoops, spoilers).


What Is It?

A 9-card solitaire card game. The player plays a new card into their grove each turn following certain tile placement rules – they must always cover at least one tree or glade with the new card, and when covering trees (or already placed dice) with more trees, the type of fruit on the overlapping trees must match what is below it. The player is trying to increase the number of fruits they have – shown with pips on dice. Once all the cards are played, the player can add up their dice to get a final score and compare that to the chart in the rulebook (“How fruitful was your harvest?”) to see how well they did!


Who Is It For?

  • 1 Player (Fans of Solo Gaming)
  • Ages 12 +
  • Fans of puzzley games
  • Fans of quick gameplay
  • Players who like to game on the go

Variants

Recipe Challenge – For this, the player starts by flipping 2 random cards to their recipe side, which gives them a target score to hit in order to win, as well as some ways to score bonus points. I thought this was a great variant to the game. It doesn’t up the difficulty too must, but instead just changes the nature of the puzzle, and there are a ton of combinations of recipes possible, so it’ll give you something different every time. Definitely recommend trying this once you’re familiar with the basic game.

Multiplayer Game – Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to try this since I only had one copy of the game, but I did want to mention it just because I thought it was neat that you could play it with a group if you all had a copy. (Time to start posting online to find people near me who have it I suppose… haha!) Very neat!


PROS

  • Small / Portable
  • Small rule set
  • Plays quickly
  • Easy to set-up and clean-up
  • 2 ways to play (3 if you have multiple copies)
  • Components – The dice have cute fruit pips, and I love them! Overall nice quality components all around
  • Aesthetics – It has a simple look, but it’s very clean, and very attractive

CONS

  • The game doesn’t change a ton play to play. You have different cards, but the game has a very “samey” feel. The recipe challenges definitely help with that, since that changes the scoring, but still not a huge overhaul.

Final Thoughts

I thought this was an excellent solo experience! I don’t play solo a ton, but I think I’ll likely keep coming back to this.

It is small and portable, so it’s a great choice for traveling. But it’s also easy to pull out and play a quick game during a lunch break, or to wind down just before bed.

If you’re someone who struggles with puzzles, or always wants to find the one best path, this might not be for you; there are so many moves available to you, and you could spend forever trying to lay down your cards (especially if you are trying to get additional scoring from recipes). But, if you just like a solid puzzle game, that you can play a few times in a row, and keep trying to beat your last score, this is a great choice! It’s light, short, sweet, and so cute, I really recommend it for you soloists!


Additional Information:
My Final Rating: 7/10

Designer – Mark Tuck
Artist – Mark Tuck
Publisher – Side Room Games
MSRP – $15.99 ($15 for the KS)
Website
Kickstarter

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

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