Publisher: AEG & Flatout Games
Player Count: 1-5 Players
Dedicated Solo mode: Yes
Game Length: 30-45 Minutes
Complexity 2.25/5
In this puzzle-y game of plant nourishment and home decor, you’re tasked with creating a harmonious home environment for your furniture, pets and of course your plants. Plan out your rooms and the placement of your house plants to provide the right amount of light to keep them healthy. Earn bonus points for building synergy with your furniture and creating comfortable places for your pets. From the team behind the mega-hit Cascadia, Verdant plays like a distant cousin edging on some similar ideas, but ultimately integrating more options and point scoring conditions to up its game.
ON YOUR TURN
Verdant is primarily an open drafting game where players choose from a community space of 4 columns. Each column contains a plant card, a room space card and a nurture or item token. On your turn you’ll choose 1 of the cards and token from the same column to add into your personal home space.
The goal in drafting these cards is to create a grid pairing plants with rooms to satisfy their need for proper sunlight. Players will draft cards into their home space which will eventually form a 5×3 checkered grid of rooms and plants. Each room has 4 light sources (top, bottom and sides) representing different levels of light (or verdancy) that can be paired with the light needs identified on a plant card.
As players build their house grid, they’ll also have the opportunity to place a drafted token on an open room space. These tokens come in 2 separate categories and can both be beneficial to achieving different scoring goals. Nurture Item Tokens represent fertilizer, hand trowels and watering cans. Activating these tokens will bring more verdancy to your house plants. Why is this important? Plants score bonus points at the end of the game when you’ve satisfied their necessary verdancy. Since all plants are different, the amount of verdancy needed for each will differ with plans hungrier for light earning more points at the end of the game. Give the plant light and score the points!
The second token item category is Unique Item Tokens. These tokens consist of different furniture and household items as well as a variety of pets. Each unique item token has a specific colored background that harmonizes with a specific room color/type. Pairing these tokens with the right rooms can provide additional point benefits.
Pairing different plants with different rooms while activating different tokens creates a think-y, puzzle-style gameplay where point opportunities are everywhere and optimizing your scoring chances is the key to coming out on top.
Players collect green thumbs throughout the game to eventually spend during drafting to break rules and refresh your choices. Unique plant, item and room goals are optional game additions used to create additional scoring opportunities.
After each player finished out their home, score commences. With optional scoring opportunities added, players have the chance to score in 10 different categories making this a real point salad finish.
SOLO MODE
Verdancy does have a dedicated solo mode that creates a bit of a conveyor belt in the drafting market. It seems to function pretty well keeping the market fresh and providing new drafting opportunities each turn. Finished plant scoring pots rotate away from the columns each turn creating a sense of urgency to complete as many plants as quickly as possible. The upkeep isn’t terrible since you’re just sliding cards and tokens over each turn, but the items kept snagging on my game table making it a bit more of a chore than it should be. While I prefer this in groups, overall, I think the solo mode is a satisfactory way to play the game. There are additional scenarios that can be tied into the solo and multiplayer modes that work to extend the life of the game.
ARTWORK & COMPONENTS
The artwork from nature artist extraordinaire, Beth Sobel (Wingspan, Cascadia) is all expertly done with a great color palette and scientific accuracy. The components bring a lot of personality to the game including different style plant pots you place on cards, green thumb tokens and different sized wooden verdancy tokens that are shaped like ferns. Overall, I’m a big fan of the production.
PROS & CONS
➕ Fun, gentle theme
➕ Easy to learn & teach
➕ Plays quickly
➕ Easy to set up
➕ Fun decisions
➕ Challenging puzzle
➕ “Think-y” family-style game
➕ Nice artwork
➖ Think-y game play might lead to slow turns
➖ Limited player interaction
➖ Certain goals can potentially feel out-of-reach and frustrating
WHY WOULD YOU LIKE THIS GAME?
Fans of casual, puzzle games like Cascadia are going to appreciate what Verdant has to offer. Player conflict is nearly non-existent providing a very mellow, easy-going vibe. While there can be think-y turns, choices are relatively simple and there is always something positive to do.
BEST THING ABOUT THIS GAME?
The best thing about Verdant is the theme. The idea of managing a home, making sure you’re providing nourishment to your plants as well as organizing the furniture and mood of each room is very relaxing and appealing.
FINAL THOUGHTS
It’s nearly impossible for me to talk about Verdant without bringing up Cascadia. I’m a huge fan of the tile-laying, nature-pattern building Cascadia that was released back in 2021. Verdant is from the same designer and publisher team so there was plenty of confidence baked into the release. It’s clear that Verdant plays on some of the more successful mechanics from Cascadia such as the open drafting where you choose a token and a card. Verdant attempts to separate itself by raising the choices and complexity to create a more challenging and think-y game.
While Cascadia celebrates its simple, streamlined gameplay for gateway players, Verdant attempts to serve fans of the former with a more involved puzzle that caters to slightly more seasoned gamers. Once I was able to separate the two and really determine what Verdant was about, I was quickly able to embrace it and enjoy it.
I still think Verdant works well as a family-style game, but the choices and options can lead to some lengthy turns for players prone to over analysis. This is just something you’ll need to take into consideration before playing. There are plenty of strategies and experiences to be had thanks to the huge variety of plants, rooms and tokens and that all adds up to lots of interesting decisions and a healthy dose of replay ability.
Overall, the game is very easy to learn and teach and the theme’s universal appeal is going to have plenty of people jumping on board. Halfway through her first game, my 10-year-old daughter holler at my wife, “Have you played this yet? This is a lot of fun!” She’s right. Verdant is a lot of fun—it has a lot of personality, beautiful artwork and decisions that are just challenging enough to create a think-y experience that doesn’t feel weighed down by unnecessary complexity. I’m not sure Verdant will reach the “classic” status of a game like Cascadia, but it’s a worthy successor I can see getting regular playing time. Verdant is a keeper in my collection!
