Grow the best Grove that you can and harvest fruit, in Grove, a 9 card solitaire game from Side Room Games, the maker of Orchard.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sideroomgames/grove?ref=user_menu

Pros

• Pedigree
• Price
• Shipping
• Solo Game
• Ease of Play
• Print and Play

Cons

• Is It Different Enough?

The Page

I don’t have a ton to say about this page besides that it is good. If I had a negative about it, I’d want more examples showing off how the game play works visually. On the flip side, it’s easy to find where they talk about game play and they really explain the whole game there. If you wanted to, it’d be easy to get up and running with the print and play version of the game right now.

Shipping is very reasonable, and it doesn’t “ruin” the kickstarter value. Often times games will cost $100 plus $50 shipping with an MSRP of $130 and free shipping later. So you need extra things to make it worth it. Here, I think that the value of this game is highly reasonable and it’s a good way to support a smaller company, though it is fully funded already.

The Game

I can basically tell you how this game plays with the explanation on the page. But I want to highlight a few things I find really interesting about this game play. The first is the empty spots on the cards. That really creates a new strategy for the game using those open spots for flexibility on placing future cards. It opens up the game more, but instead of having two times you can not match, you are now limited to a single time.

I also like that the numbers of the dice increase not by just stacking the cards but by number of fruit on the card. I don’t know that this changes up the strategy of the game massively, but it is going to make the scoring feel different. It’s a nice twist on scoring while keeping the game at a nice level of complexity.

There is also the new backs of the cards. Recipes that you can use to determine the win condition of the game. Another twist on the game, but one that I’m less interested in, oddly enough. It seems like it might be fun, but I’ll likely stick to the basic scoring of the game, just seeing how many points I can get for a while. The idea of the recipes means that you need to think about something more and consider before you start. I like just being able to start.

Back or Brick

Is this game a Back or Brick for me? For $15 plus $5 shipping, this was an easy Back for me. I already love Orchard by Side Room Games, and you can see my thoughts on that here. But let’s put it this way, I’ve played Orchard 62 times since I got it in August. It’s a great game to just sit down and play fast multiple times. I think that Grove is going to give me another one of that type of solo game. Both of these games also go along nicely with A Gentle Rain which also has a similar feel.

Is Grove a Back or a Brick for you?

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