Evergreen is a drafting, pattern-building game.

Title: Evergreen

Year Published: 2022

Designer: Hjalmar Hach

Publisher: Horrible Guild

Players: 1-4

Game Time: ~45 mins

Set-up Time: ~1 minute

Ages: 8+

Theme: Nature

Mechanisms: Drafting, Pattern-Building

How to win: Score the most points by building biomes and

Game Description

Your goal is to build a lush ecosystem by planting seeds, growing trees, and placing other natural elements on your planet, trying to make it the greenest and most fertile of all.

How to play Evergreen

A quick how-to-play video of Evergreen.

Theme

I do like the theme. Growing trees and collecting sunlight was fun in Photosynthesis (from the same designer) and it’s fun here.

Setup & Rulebook

The setup is to give out a board and shuffle the cards. You have to put the 9 little cylinders in their place but the spaces they go in are helpfully coloured.

The rulebook is very clear and gives a lot of examples, especially around gathering sunlight.

Components & Artwork

The components for the trees, sprouts, rivers and bushes are all really nice. The dual-layered board does a good job of keeping things in place. The cards are clear when showing fertility and action but not so much for the biome. The two shades of green and the brown vs reddish brown I keep having to check.

Ease of Teaching & Accessibility

The game is very easy to teach with only 2 actions that come in 4 different variations. Of the 7 powers, 3 are the same as the actions and 1 is just to score points so it’s not complicated.

Evergreen Summary

So I bought this at Essen after playing it. I only had 50 Euros cash left of my budget and a shortlist of 3 games but this one won out.

I bought it not just because it looked good, but because I enjoyed playing it. Playing it since I find it really difficult to strategise… in a good way.

You need to gain sunlight and build a connected area of greenery to get those end-of-round points.

But if you’re not paying attention to growing big trees in the most fertile biomes you’ll miss HUGE end-of-game scoring. So you need to not only look at what actions you’re taking but also at where you’re able to take them. If you draft cards for a biome it means that the biome isn’t going to become more fertile and therefore worth more points.

As you only have 14 cards, so 14 actions plus 14 powers, you don’t get long to plan, It’s really tricky.

Evergreen Round-Up

A very fun puzzle.

Rating

I give it 7/10