Floriferous is live (Crows in the garden)
Update: Floriferous has launched on Kickstarter and the campaign will run for 13 days. You may pledge for a copy of the game with the Early Spring mini expansion, or combine it with other games by Pencil First (Herbaceous, Sunset Over Water).
Our preview post below was published on March 18.
Floriferous is a drafting and set collection card game for 1-4 players. In the solo mode, you collect flowers to make the most beautiful bouquet while tolerating the interference of a pesky crow. It will launch on Kickstarter on March 23.
The game is played over three 'days' of five rounds each. At the start of each day, you must set up a display of two rows of five cards. A third row of Desire cards featuring special scoring conditions you can claim for yourself is then added. Furthermore, you place three Bounty cards on top of the display, and these will remain there throughout the game. The Bounty cards feature additional scoring conditions that you may fulfill at any point, the sooner the better.
On each round, you must pick a card from the column next to your pawn, and then move the pawn onto the spot you took the card from. That way, you collect one card from each column throughout a single day and cross the entire board from one side to the other. If there are stone tokens on a card, you can collect them. The card you collect during a round can be the Desire card of that column, or a Garden card that shows a flower (of a specific type, color, and maybe a bug symbol), or an arrangement that gives you a new scoring condition.
Once you have picked a card, you must reveal a Crow card. The crow will meddle with the cards of the next column. It can replace one card with a face-down card so that you won’t have perfect information over your choice during the next round. It can also discard this card and put stone tokens instead. If you decide to pick this empty spot in the next round, you discard the stones and don’t collect anything. Otherwise, at the end of the day, the crow will collect the scattered stones. If the crow has gathered at least four stones, you will be forced to discard one of your collected cards. Alternatively, you can spend your own collected stones to discard as many from the crow.
At the end of the game, you tally up your score. You get points from all the scoring goals you collected during the game (Desire cards and Arrangement cards), as well as from the Bounty cards you fulfilled. All collected stone tokens bring you one point each. Finally, you have a Cup of Tea card in your possession at the beginning of the game, that you can use once to skip the Crow turn. If you did not use it, you score a bonus of 2 points.
Looking at the designers, I'd say that's a pretty seasoned trio (Eduardo Baraf, Steve Finn, and Keith Matejka). I didn't even realize Edo was a designer (and founder of Pencil First Games) - I thought he was just a reviewer. I need to look at things more closely. 🙂