Off the Shelf #32: Floriferous

Another Off the Shelf post, and this time we’re looking at

image by BGG user ebaraf

Floriferous is a 1-4 player game designed by Steve Finn and Eduardo Baraf, published by Pencil First Games. The solo mode was designed by Keith Matejka, and art was by Clémentine Campardou. It’s a game about flowers, where you’re trying to score as many points as possible by collecting sets and fulfilling your desires (for flowers).

The game is set up by laying out four rows of five Garden cards in a four-player game, three with three players, and two for two. (I won’t be describing the solo rules yet as they’re a little different.) Some cards will be face down, and some will have stones on them. Below the bottom row, you’ll deal out five Desire cards. Additionally, you’ll deal out three Bounty cards above the garden. Each player takes a pawn and, in turn order, places it to the left of one of the rows, top to bottom.

Setup for a three-player game

Turn order for the game goes top to bottom. The first player moves their pawn to any of the cards in the first column and takes it into their collection. If there was a stone on it, they get that too. Then the next player chooses from what is left. Once all players have taken a card from the first column, the top player will choose a card from the second. Depending on which cards you take, this means turn order will be shifting throughout the game.

Once all players have finished the final column, the round (Day One) is over and a new round is dealt out. Players will repeat the process for Day Two, except this time, they’ll be moving the other direction. Day Three is back to the original direction, and then the game ends and points are calculated.

There are a number of ways to score:

• Arrangements: A flower arrangement card (taken from one of the rows) gives you three symbols. If you have one of them among your final flower collection, you score one point. Two will give you three, and three will give you five.
• Sculptures: The player with the most sculpture cards scores five points. Second most gets three, and third most gets one. Ties are friendly, so tied players get the higher points.
• Desires: Each desire card has a special condition for scoring points, such as scoring for each instance of a particular flower, or bugs, or color, or lots of one thing, or having lots of different things.
• Bounties: At the end of each day, you’ll check to see if you completed a Bounty. Each Bounty card has three symbols. If you have all three of those at the end of a day, you put a flower token in the space for that day. You get fewer points the longer it takes to complete these.
• Stones: For every two stones you collect, you get one point.
• Cup of Tea: The player with the most stones gets this, which is worth two points.

The player with the high score wins.

Ten points worth of pink flowers

I got this game a couple of years ago as a review game, and liked it enough to keep it after the review was done. The Pencil First games I have payed have been nature themed set collection games, and honestly kind of peaceful. This one is a game about flowers, and it doesn’t really get much more peaceful than that.

First things first, the art in this game is great. Clémentine Campardou did a fantastic job rendering all the flowers. I think the thing I appreciate the most is that it’s not a cut-and-paste art job. There are different colors of each flower, and it’s not just the same flower with a different color. It’s a different picture. And even flowers of the same type and color are different. It’s really nice.

The open drafting concept here is pretty interesting. You can see the flowers that are coming across the grid, and if there’s something you really want, you need to put yourself in a position to take it ahead of time. This sometimes means taking something that’s less than ideal, but that’s a choice you have to make. It’s not quite a perfect information game as there are a couple of face down cards in the grid, but it’s close. After the setup, there’s not that much luck, which makes it imperative that you try to plan for the future. Sometimes, of course, there’s nothing you can do about someone taking your position, but thinking strategically can yield a good amount of points.

There are a number of ways to score in the game, which means there a number of paths to victory. You’re mainly going to want to focus on desires and bounties. Arrangements and sculptures come out in setup of each round, but unless you’re able to collect a bunch, they’re not necessarily going to yield a lot of points. Stones too are tough to get big scores on as you have to have two in order to get one point – that means you’re taking garden cards that are lower down in turn order several times to get much of a benefit.

Bounties, on the other hand, exist from the beginning and you know what you’re aiming for from the start. You won’t get significantly more points from these than from other stuff (a max of five, and that’s only if you complete it on Day One), but they do provide an objective from the beginning. The desires are great because they give you a personal objective that no one else has, even though you do have to go last in turn order if you want one.

The solo mode for this game introduces a crow. This crow has a deck of cards that tell you what it steals each round – cards and stones. It works pretty well – the crow can get super-annoying, but it is referred to as a “pesky guest”, so I guess that tracks. The win condition for this solo mode is meeting a target score, which is a little better than a beat-your-own-score type game.

I’ve recently become aware of the term “cozy fantasy”. It’s a story set in a fantasy world that has pretty low stakes, as in the book Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree. I feel like the term “cozy” applies pretty well here. It’s a peaceful kind of game, one you can just play casually with the family. I like it.

Floriferous comes into the Off the Shelf rankings at #17. Clever as I think it is, it’s still pretty light, and not a game I find myself wanting to play often. Still good.

That’s it for another edition of Off the Shelf. Thanks for reading!