The Hanging Gardens – A Garden That Won’t Grow Itself

King Nebuchadnezzar has quite the task for you. His wife, Queen Amytis, longs for a magnificent garden, and you’re one of the royal gardeners competing to create the most stunning design. The challenge? Craft a breathtaking landscape that impresses the queen more than any of your rivals’ gardens. No pressure, right?

👥 1-5 players, ages 10+
⌛ Playing time: 30 minutes
📝 Designers: Grégory Grard & Matthieu Verdier
🎨 Artwork: Miguel Coimbra

🏢 Publisher: Gigamic (review copy provided)

Gameplay Overview

The game takes place over four rounds. Each turn, you’ll place one of your gardeners on an action space beneath a column, which lets you choose a card from that column to add to your garden. Some cards are free, while others require you to spend tools or coins, depending on their position.

Each card features an archway with different elements. You might get an irrigation canal, some flowers, a wandering animal, a grand old tree, or even a visitor stopping by to admire your work.

Building Your Garden

Your garden isn’t just a random sprawl of plants and ponds. You’ll be carefully constructing a pyramid, starting with five cards in the bottom row, then stacking four on the next level, three above that, and so on. Every card placed on a higher level must rest on two cards beneath it.

Once you place a card, you’ll resolve its action. Some cards grant useful bonuses like extra tools, coins, or even the start player token.

Enhancements and Royal Objectives

After refilling the display with a new card, you’ll have the option to spend your coins on enhancement tiles. These let you upgrade empty arches, turning them into beautiful flowerbeds, animal habitats, or shady tree-lined walkways. Some enhancements even come with bonuses or irrigation features, making them especially useful.

On top of that, you can claim a royal objective by placing one of your markers on it. These objectives offer valuable points at the end of the game. Holding the first player marker gives you a small advantage. It lowers the requirement for an objective by one, making it just a little easier to complete. It’s a minor perk, but along with choosing first in the next round, it can give you just the edge you need.

Scoring and Winning the Game

Once all players have placed all their gardeners and taken their actions, the round ends. Everyone takes back their gardeners, and the first player kicks off the next round.

After four rounds, it’s time to see who built the most impressive garden. You’ll score points based on the number of flowers, trees, and animals you’ve collected. Visitors also provide points based on their specific requirements. Finally, your irrigation system comes into play. At the start of the game, you received an irrigation card, and now you’ll earn points depending on how well your garden’s water system matches it.

At the end of it all, the gardener with the most points wins. The queen is pleased, your rivals are envious, and you can bask in the glory of having built one of the most legendary gardens in history.

Game Info

The Hanging Gardens is a family-friendly strategy game published by Gigamic, the same company behind games like Akropolis and Looot. This time, designers Grégory Grard and Matthieu Verdier bring their expertise to the table. Their names might not be as instantly recognizable as some of the industry’s biggest designers, but they’ve been making a name for themselves in recent years. Together, they designed In the Footsteps of Darwin, while separately working on titles like Castle Combo and Federation. Grard is also behind the upcoming two-player game Zenith, which already looks promising.

The Hanging Gardens is designed for one to five players, with a recommended age of 10 and up, and an average playtime of 30 minutes. It’s the kind of game that fits into busy schedules but still gives your brain a little workout. You can finish a game in half an hour, making it great for a quick session after work or as a warm-up for a longer game night. It’s also great for families, though younger players might need a bit more time to wrap their heads around the pyramid-building and how all the elements connect.

Components and Artwork

Before we get into the gameplay, let’s talk about the components. Overall, the production quality is solid. The game comes with a double-sided board to adjust for different player counts, a deck of 75 garden cards, irrigation cards, and a set of solo mode cards. The cards are well made, with clean iconography that makes it easy to see what’s what.

There are also 25 enhancement tiles and 10 objective tiles, though only four are used in each game. These are sturdy cardboard, just like the tool and gold coin tokens, which hold up well even after multiple plays. Each player gets gardener meeples in their color, along with matching player markers for objectives. The game even includes a scorepad, which is always a nice touch for end-game scoring.

Now, let’s talk about the artwork. Personally, I love how the game looks. Miguel Coimbra has done a great job with the illustrations. It has a clean, elegant aesthetic with a slightly playful, cartoony feel. It’s colorful but not overwhelming, and the gardens you build actually feel visually satisfying by the time the game ends. If you like board games that look good on the table, this one definitely delivers.

Gameplay and Strategy

The Hanging Gardens is one of those games that’s easy to learn but gives you plenty to think about. You can explain the rules in about ten minutes, and from there, the game moves at a nice pace.

At its core, it combines worker placement, tile placement, and set collection in a way that feels intuitive. Each turn, you place a gardener meeple on an available action space and take a card from the corresponding column. Simple enough, right? But the real challenge comes in how you construct your garden pyramid.

This is where the game gets interesting. It’s not just about picking cards at random. You have to think about where to place them to maximize your points. You’ll want to make sure irrigation canals line up properly, flowers and trees connect in ways that score efficiently, and animals end up on the levels where they bring the most points. Then there are the visitors and common objectives, which force you to keep an eye on what your opponents are doing and adjust your strategy accordingly.

And let’s not forget resource management. Coins and tools might not seem like much at first, but they can make a huge difference. Tools can help you grab a higher-value card before someone else takes it, and coins allow you to buy enhancements that turn empty arches into valuable scoring opportunities. A well-placed enhancement can be the difference between a decent garden and a winning one.

Dealing with Randomness

Since the cards and enhancement tiles are drawn randomly, there’s always a bit of unpredictability. That perfect card you’re waiting for? It might never show up. Or worse, someone else might grab it first. It’s all about adapting and making the best of what’s available.

Personally, I don’t mind a bit of randomness in a game like this, but if you’re the type of player who likes full control over your strategy, it might frustrate you. The best approach is to stay flexible and spread your strategy across multiple scoring opportunities instead of banking on a single plan. If you focus too much on one thing, you could end up stuck when the right cards don’t appear. Sometimes, you have to work with what you’ve got and hope the gardening gods are on your side.

Turn Order and Player Interaction

One of the challenges in The Hanging Gardens is that your choices become more limited as the round progresses. There are exactly as many action spaces as there are players, so once people start placing their gardeners, the available columns shrink.

If you’re the last player in a round, you only have one column to choose from on your last turn. That’s why securing the first player marker at the right moment can be a smart move. Not only does it let you go first next round, but it also reduces the requirement for objectives by one, making them a bit easier to complete.

Replayability and Strategy Variety

Each game, you’ll use four objectives from a set of ten, which means you can’t rely on the same strategy every time. One game, you might focus on collecting animals, while the next time, you’re better off chasing visitor bonuses. It forces you to adapt your strategy, and I appreciate that. It keeps things fresh and stops players from falling into the same routine every game.

Is This the Right Game for You?

The Hanging Gardens hits a nice middle ground. It’s not a super heavy strategy game, but it’s also not a quick filler. If you enjoy puzzle-based games where you have to plan ahead and make careful placements, this one might be for you.

There’s no direct player conflict, but there is competition for cards and turn order, so you’ll still need to keep an eye on your opponents. The interaction level is just right for this kind of game. There’s competition, but it never feels like a battle for survival.

If you enjoy games like Cascadia, Patchwork, or Carcassonne, where you have to fit things together in a satisfying but sometimes brain-burning way, The Hanging Gardens definitely scratches that itch. If spatial puzzles aren’t your thing, though, you might find it more frustrating than fun.

Final Thoughts

At its heart, The Hanging Gardens is a straightforward but rewarding puzzle game. You take one mandatory action and one optional action each turn, keeping the gameplay quick but thoughtful.

Personally, I had a great time with it. It fits perfectly in Gigamic’s line of family-weight games, alongside Akropolis and Looot. If you’ve played those before, you’ll have a good idea of what to expect. That said, I do think The Hanging Gardens is a little more complex than Looot, which is nice if you’re looking for a bit more depth.

It’s an elegant tile-laying game with a fun spatial puzzle at its core. The gameplay is engaging without being overwhelming. Would I play it again? Absolutely. Would I recommend it to casual and mid-weight gamers? For sure.

That said, if spatial reasoning isn’t your thing, this might not be the game for you. Some players will love the challenge of fitting everything together just right, while others might find it frustrating when a perfect placement doesn’t come together.

But hey, if legendary gardens were easy to build, Nebuchadnezzar wouldn’t need you in the first place.

📝 We received a copy of the game from Gigamic.