Evergreen

Plant seeds and grow trees to build a lush ecosystem on your planet!

1-4 players, ages 8+
Playing time: 45 minutes
Designer: Hjalmar Hach
Artwork: Wenyi Geng

Publisher: Horrible Guild
https://horribleguild.com/

🌳 A game of Evergreen is played over the course of 4 seasons, in which players try to build the greenest and most fertile forest on their personal planet board.
🌳 Each turn, players are drafting one of the open biome cards, which determines the biome and power that will be developed this round. In the depicted biome, you perform one of the possible actions, such as planting new sprouts, make sprouts grow into small trees or grow small trees into big trees.
The biome card also shows a power that corresponds with one of the 6 power tracks on your board. You upgrade the power to the next step, and apply its effect anywhere on your planet. This way you can plant sprouts or grow trees, but also place lakes or plant bushes to enlarge your biggest forest.
The biome card that remains unchosen moves to the fertility zone and will earn players points for their big trees they have in the corresponding biome at game end.
🌳 At the end of each season, players earn points for their trees that collect light; depending on the position of the sun, some trees will stand in the shadow from other trees. They also earn points for each tree and bush in their biggest forest. Finally, the season changes and the sun markers move to the next space around the planet boards.
🌳 At the end of the fourth season, players earn additional points for their big trees, depending on the cards in the fertility zone. Whoever collected the most points created the lushest planet and wins the game!

💭 Evergreen is an accessible game that comes with a nice theme and great components, especially the wooden treeples and the dual layered boards are top notch.
There’s a good mix of tactical and strategic decisions to make over the course of the game, as you can focus on having a large forest but then of course trees will be in each other’s shadow, but you can also spread them out to have more sunlight or focus on big trees for the end game scoring.
The game lasts about 15 min/player which is perfect for this type of game. The turns are quick and you certainly want to keep an eye on where your opponents are growing big trees for the end game fertility scoring, so there’s little downtime.
We’ve really enjoyed playing Evergreen and I must say it’s our most frequently played game in the weeks after Spiel in Essen this year, so we’re happy to give it a permanent spot in our collection!