Floriferous Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review Floriferous a great looking card game published by Pencil First Games. In Floriferous, players are moving through the garden, picking up flowers and trying to collect points.

Sometimes you want a cutthroat, no-holds-barred board game that lets you beat your opponents into a pulp and claim victory over their fallen corpses. Other times, you want to keep your friends. Floriferous is a game for fostering friendship. It’s a gentle wander through a lush garden on a sunny day. Do you want to earn points by collecting bouquets, or placing unique statues? Will your garden be known for its yellow lilies or its pink dahlias? Will it attract the best butterflies? And who will earn the coveted cup of tea card? Just because it’s gentle, doesn’t mean Floriferous, a card game for 2-4 players by Pencil First, isn’t compelling and entertaining. Wander over, grab your watering can,  and enjoy a stroll through the flowers.

The goal of Floriferous is to prove you are the best gardener in the bunch. The game is played across three rounds, or days spent tending the garden, and at the end of the third round the player with the most victory points wins. Points are earned by clearing stones from the garden, creating beautiful flower arrangements, having a wide variety of sculptures, and completing two different types of objective cards: collective bounty cards that everyone can score, and personal desire cards, which individual players claim. The gameplay is fairly straightforward, and you aren’t likely to be surprised by a twist outcome. That doesn’t mean that the game lacks a competitive edge, however.

The bounty cards are laid at the top of the field, a grid of cards is arranged in the middle of the field, and desire cards reside at the bottom. Players take turns moving a pawn across the grid, claiming either a flower card or a desire card as they move through the rows of the grid from one side to the other. You need to choose which cards you select wisely to maximize your