Please note: These are just a sample of the games we have - to give you a taste!
Cottage Garden
- 1-4 players
- 45 minutes play time
- “tetris” style pieces
- Cottage Garden BGG link
Build English country gardens with “tetris” style flower tiles and helpful cats. Strategically select your tiles (polyominos) from a randomised grid of many different sized and shaped tiles decorated with a variety of flower types and garden furniture. Gain points from the number of cloches and flower pots you can include in your garden designs and use a cats as an emergency 1 space filler tile. Competitive gardening!
Evolution: Climate
- 2-6 players
- 60 minutes play time
- Card mechanic
- Evolution: Climate BGG link
Adapt your species and survive in a constantly changing environment. Each round you can choose how many species to nurture and develop, at the end of the round you need to be able to feed all your surviving creatures. Also the weather is changing and a creature adapted for a warm climate may suffer if a bout of global cooling occurs in the next round. Do you breed a pack of small burrowing plant eaters or focus on a few camouflaged carnivores, warm coats or cooling frills, hibernating or migratory? Each species can only have four traits so choose wisely and watch what other creatures are evolving next door so you don’t become their dinner!
Fluxx
- 2-6 players
- 5-30 minutes play time
- card game
- Fluxx BGG link
A simple fast paced games where the rules and end goal change almost every turn. Many themes are available from space or pirates to nature and family. You start by taking a card and playing a card and building some keeper cards on the table. A certain combination of keepers wins the game but the other gamers will be changing the goals so they have the right combination not you. Can be won in a couple of rounds or go round for many turns as players thwart each other, no game is the same.
O Zoo le Mio
- 2-4 players
- 45 minutes play time
- auction, set collection and tile placement
- O Zoo le Mio
Another relatively simple game, build your zoo over 5 years (or rounds) and score points for the most types of animals, trees or circular paths. Each year 5 domino-like tiles with 2 animal enclosures and some paths are set out and there is an auction phase to bid for each tile. If you win you add the tile to your zoo. After each tile is added you compare zoos to see who has the most of each type of animal (mammals, birds, reptiles, aquatic and primates) and the highest gets 2 visitor meeples, the second gets one. You also check which zoo has the most trees to earn tree tokens in the same way and if you can create a circular path you gain a bench token. At the end of each year count up how many tokens are in your zoo and score, with successive years getting a multiplier so year 5 is worth 5x the number of tokens. It is a pretty game and the main challenge is in trying to select and then win the auction for the right tiles to attract the visitors to your latest attraction rather than the oppositions.
Planet
- 2-4 players
- 30 minutes play time
- 3D magnetic pieces
- Planet BGG link
Each player receives a planet core which is a magnetic dodecahedron (12 faces) and on each round they choose and add a terrain tile. Terrain tiles are pentagons consisting of 5 triangles of various combinations of sea, mountain, ice, forest or desert. Each round you try to attract animals to your planet by making it the most favourable to them based on their preferred terrain conditions, for instance the largest forest touching desert, the largest ocean not touching ice or the most discrete areas of mountain. You can see which animals (randomly selected each game) are available in future rounds and can try to plan ahead but it is quite fiendish trying to keep track of all the areas and interactions around a 3D shape. At the end score points dependent on animal types attracted and a secret terrain related mission.
Wingspan
- 1-5 players
- 60 minutes play time
- Card and dice mechanic, set collection
- Wingspan BGG link
From a new wave of interesting educational board games, this one makes learning facts about birds fun. Ultimately the game is about attracting birds to your wildlife preserves and using them to gain victory points in a variety of ways.
Each bird has a points value when played to a habitat, eggs and cached food or cards are worth victory points and there are end of round and end of game bonuses to help suggest which birds you might wish to attract. There are hundreds of bird cards and each bird has a power that can be activated and often combined with those of other birds to rake in those points.
The game requires balancing food, egg production, and bird cards to build the best ornithological reserve over four rounds. With beautiful artwork, well thought out components and fairly easy to learn rules it can be good to go birding with friends from the comfort of your living room.
