Advert: This prototype was loaned by Whales Entertainment. Components and rules are subject to change.

Yesterday this new bud on the block launched on Kickstarter – and here’s what we thought of the early prototype.

👥 2 to 4 players
⌛ 30 to 60 minutes
🧠 8+ years

Gameplay overview

Each turn players have 2 actions to spend on collecting flower tiles from a market row, and/or using tiles from their hand to build up a pretty 3-dimensional pergola. If the newly placed tile completes a flower that player gets a petal token in that flower colour, plus an additional token for each connecting flower of the same colour along the vines. Tokens are kept hidden behind each players’ screens, and at the end of the game, players count up their rarest petals (i.e. the colour they have the least of). The player with the highest score wins.

Some tiles have insects that grant the player additional bonuses:

• Spiders let you take a tile from the market for free.
• Bees give the player an extra action of their choice.
• Butterflies give the player a wild hue token, which can be used to complete any flower.
• Ladybirds give the player a ladybird token, which can be used as a wild petal at the end of the game

There are also hummingbird tiles, which are used to activate effects on event cards and trigger the end game. There are 2 ways to activate hummingbirds, resulting in 2 different effects. A player can collect a hummingbird tile from the market and activate a personal effect (e.g. that player gains a yellow petal token). Or if a hummingbird tile is at the front of the market row at the end of a round, the tile is removed and added to an even card to activate the global effect (e.g. the player with the most yellow petals gains a ladybird token).

The game starts with 2 hummingbirds in play, but there are 3 others that players can add into the game by completing ‘contracts’. Players must reveal 4/5/6 identical petals from behind their screen to complete a contract, allowing them to claim 2 ladybird tokens and add a hummingbird to the tile bag. When a 5th hummingbird is drawn into the market, the game ends immediately.

Our thoughts:

• Vines and Flowers is a relaxing tactile game with a pretty, almost vintage-like aesthetic, and the vertical tile building feels unique. Matt in particular enjoyed spatially puzzling out how to gain the most petals in one go – although as the pergola builds up and out it gets harder to see the vines/flowers that are deeper in the centre of the structure. It did sometimes feel like the main ‘strategy’ was to collect tiles until you can take two placement actions to start and complete a flower in one turn – otherwise you risk opening up a chain that your opponent takes advantage of.

• The gameplay itself is simple and relaxing, but the version of the rules we had (which had changed a lot from the original prototype rules) still needed a lot of editing for clarity. Some player aids would also be great.

• 3 event cards are randomly selected each game, and activated in order – so if you claim a hummingbird tile, you don’t get to pick which personal effect to activate. Personally I think this made things more interesting (when best to time grabbing a hummingbird, or leaving it to eventually activate the global effect), but I could see others finding this annoying.

• We liked the addition of the insect powers to the tiles. The butterfly does feel a little weaker because it’s the only one that requires you to spend an action – personally we think it should be a bonus action to place the wild hue tile. 

• For a prototype, the components are lovely. The tiles slide together easily but firmly – there’s no concern about the pergola falling apart. The wooden petal tokens (included in the deluxe addition or available as an add-on) feel good quality. I also like that each petal colour type has a different design as an additional way to tell them apart.

• I think keeping your petals hidden behind player screens is interesting, but there are some elements that I think conflict with this intention. For example, there are 5-value petal tokens, but if you decided to swap single petals for a 5-token during the game, surely you give away that you have (at least) 5 of that type? Also, at the end of the game, according to the rules the players remove their screens and then simultaneously assign ladybirds to specific petal types; doing this as open information can result in a bit of gaming or lead to stand-offs. In my opinion it makes more sense to assign ladybirds BEFORE removing screens.

• Ideally you need to rotate the pergola to see all sides and spot the best tile placements. Moving the standard base is doable but not ideal, so in our opinion a ‘lazy susan’ style base or similar is essential (see our PalinGnomes review for a good example of this). The Kickstarter does have wheels you can add to the base, but this is an add-on (or free for the first 200 backers).

Final verdict:

For me, Vines and Flowers’ biggest strength is the tactility and enjoyment you get from building up the 3D pergola. But overall, the rest of the gameplay didn’t quite meet my expectations – although Matt enjoyed it much more than I did. One to potentially consider if you’re looking for a cozy family-weight / gateway game; but only once the rules are cleared up.