Undergrove

First Impression: Absolutely beautiful game. It really scratches an itch theme wise. Given plant-microbe interactions are my area of academic expertise, I really appreciated the C-NPK economy representation in board game form. Some mechanisms in the game are a bit overstated in terms of their real world importance, but there are even authors notes addressing those.

The action economy has a nice flow with the photosynthesis action replenishing the carbon contributions your mother tree has to offer and re-readies your activation tokens to make use of symbioses again. Not sure I've got the hang of optimal gameplay yet, but I am head over heals with the biological concepts this game is able to distill into relatively simple mechanisms.

I thoroughly enjoyed playing Undergrove solo. I find the tactility of the wooden tiles and the amazing artwork make playing this game a really really pleasant experience.

Only played once, and only on BGA, so I hesitate to leave a particularly negative comment. That said, I found it to be rather flat. It lacked both exciting moments and a compelling arc. I think the others I played it with disliked it more than I.

I wish the mushrooms at least felt more different from each other.

First off, the theme is amazing! There is a lot of love baked into marrying the theme to the mechanics. The art is great too. But I'd rather play [b]Earth[/b]. This does have some similarities, but late in the game, there are very few things to do, apart from cold point maximizing.

Backed on Kickstarter 12/3/2023 - expected delivery 11/2024

Very chill. I imagine this is what the peaceful transfer of nutrients is like in a symbiotic forest setting. Not having experienced such a relationship first hand it seems silly for me to say this but I feel like they nailed the theme. That being said I could see why some people would say dull and repetitive but there was something very tranquil about the whole process that I can't ignore. I guess every game doesn't need a mechanism that equates to me holding a knife to other player's throats !?!?!?