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Pick a Pen: Gardens does something a little different with its unusual but rather charming idea of rolling pencils instead of dice. It’s one of those games that seems light and simple at first glance, but it has a clever little puzzle at its core that keeps you engaged. Reiner Knizia has managed to create something that feels both familiar and slightly offbeat, especially in how drafting and colour-based scoring work together.
The Seasons expansion builds nicely on what’s already there, offering three new sheets: Winter, Spring and Autumn. Each one adds a small twist that changes how you approach the game, but never so much that it feels like starting over. They just nudge you in a different direction, which I found refreshing.
👥 2-4 players, ages 8+
⌛ Playing time: 30 minutes
📝 Designer: Reiner Knizia
🎨 Artwork: Marlies Barends
🏢 Publisher: 999 Games (review copy provided)
Before we get into what makes each of the new sheets interesting, here’s a quick reminder of how the base game works.
A Quick Look Back at the Base Game
In the original Pick a Pen: Gardens, every player gets their own sheet, and one player rolls all five pencils at the start of each round. Each pencil shows a colour and a number. Starting with the roller, players draft one pencil in turn. The one you choose determines how many spaces you colour in, and in which colour.
You have to colour the exact number of adjacent spaces, and after your first move, each new group needs to connect to something you’ve already coloured. If you can’t or choose not to use the full number, you skip your turn and instead fill in one of the empty pencil symbols at the bottom of your sheet. The game ends either when a player has colored in every space on their sheet, or when someone has marked all of their empty pencil symbols, whichever comes first.
To score, you’re trying to complete gardens either entirely in one colour or by using all five. Both give you points, but mixed colours without all five won’t score at all, so you do need to think ahead. On top of that, there are shared goals like being the first to fill in the garden edge or complete the flower boxes, which brings a bit of gentle competition.
The game comes with three difficulty levels. The later ones add extra scoring for matching flowers or collecting tree symbols, but the game never gets heavy. It usually wraps up in about half an hour and feels just as tight with two players as it does with four.
A Look at the Seasonal Sheets
Winter is the most structured of the three. The garden is split into five regions, separated by little gates, and it changes how you think about the space. Instead of just working your way through gardens, you’re now working through sections. To score one of the big boxes, you need to fill in an entire region and make sure it has all five colours. That alone shifts your thinking, because suddenly you’re not just chasing gardens, but you’re chasing a kind of colour balance across a specific area.
There are a couple of extra scoring goals too. One rewards the first player to finish a full region, another gives points for being the first to touch all five. You could go for both, but I found it often makes sense to pick one and really go for it. This sheet has a more deliberate feel. You can’t just colour whatever is most convenient. It makes you plan a little further ahead and rewards players who don’t rush.
Spring feels a bit lighter, but it still asks for careful planning. In the centre of the sheet is a forbidden garden, surrounded by walls and only accessible through two gates. Being the first to fill it completely earns you a nice bonus, and getting there in time can be a bit of a race.
Another twist on this sheet comes from the garden tools. You’ll find four pairs of identical symbols spread across the sheet. If you manage to connect each pair with a continuous path of the same colour, you score points. It’s only five per pair, but doing all four gives you a twenty-point bonus, which is definitely worth going for if you can make it work. There’s also a smaller bonus for being the first to colour all the tool spaces, regardless of colour.
This sheet plays more like a puzzle. You’re looking ahead, trying to map out possible paths and work out which colour is going to give you the most options, which sometimes means holding back for a better move. It’s satisfying when the route you were planning finally comes together.
Autumn feels the most relaxed and open. The garden is split into three separate plains, and you can choose where to place your next group each round. That freedom feels nice, especially after the more restrictive layouts of the other two sheets. That said, once you’ve started in a plain, the usual rules still apply. New groups there need to be adjacent to what you’ve already coloured.
The big goal is to complete a garden with all five colours in each plain. Do it once, and you get seven points. If you manage all three, there’s a nice bonus waiting. Each plain also has five flowers you can score by matching colours, and there’s a race to be the first to fill an entire plain. At the end of the game, you also compare your largest single-colour area in each plain, which adds another reason to keep things tidy.
This sheet gives you a bit more room to explore and experiment. You can adapt your strategy on the fly, pick your battles, and shift focus depending on what pencils are still available. It’s the kind of map where your plan can evolve as the game goes on, which keeps it interesting without ever feeling stressful.
Final Thoughts
What I like about Seasons is that it doesn’t try to reinvent anything. It just shifts the puzzle slightly each time. Some sheets are more structured, others more flexible, and each one rewards a different kind of thinking. If you already enjoy Pick a Pen: Gardens, this expansion gives you more of what works, while keeping it interesting.
I’d say it’s best for players who like a bit of gentle strategy, a fair amount of planning, and the occasional quiet tension of hoping the right pencil comes your way. It plays well at two, where the drafting feels more manageable, but the shared goals are more competitive with three. With four, it becomes harder to plan your turns, but still fun if your group doesn’t mind a bit of chaos.
The expansion won’t suddenly turn the game into something deep or dramatic, but it does add variety in a way that makes each new sheet feel like a fresh challenge. If you’re the kind of player who enjoys solving small puzzles and watching them slowly come together, this will fit right in.
📝 A review copy was kindly provided by 999 Games.
