Nature games are my jam. They’re my bread, butter, and filling in my perfect gaming sandwich in fact! And Floriferous is an absolutely beautiful flower filled set collection game by Pencil First Games.

Games are played over 3 “days” where each day has 5 turns (or 7 if you play the extended two player or solo game). The purpose of the game is to collect sets of blooms that satisfy the scoring objectives for that game. These come in the form of end of round public goals (called bounty cards which score higher the earlier you can achieve them) or private goals (called desire cards which score at end game and can be collected during the game).

After laying out the garden (which are rows of flower cards and desire cards) each turn you move your meeple one step (either left to right or right to left depending on the “day”) on from your previous position. And turn order depends on your position in the column relative to other players. Some cards in the next column will be face up, others face down. The card you take is the card you add to your collection. It could be a flower, or it could be a desire card. If there are any stones on top of the card you just picked, you get to take those too! And that’s handy because the player with the most stones at end game gets a thirst quenching Cup of tea card worth 2 points!

After the third day is over, the winner is the collector with the most points from flowers, stones, desire, and bounty cards (and there’s also sculpture cards in the multiplayer game which score for the player with the most sculptures at end game).

Final Thoughts

I love playing Floriferous. Confession time though; my favourite mode is solo against the Pesky Crow automa. It’s so simple to operate and it is so mean! I don’t know how but it always knows which card I am going to need and swoops in and takes it! Any way you play Floriferous, however, is fun though. There’s a constant tension between taking a flower to fulfil a goal, taking a goal to gain points at end game, and placing your pawn in a position that gets you the position in the turn order you are going to need next. Collecting stones and sculptures won’t help in achieving goals but they are worth points too, so add another layer to the delightful decision making process. There are also bouquet cards which don’t require a desire or bounty card to score but will need you to have a combination of blooms somewhere in your collection by end game. Only being able to use a card once for each Bounty reward is another terrifically thorny element. Desire cards can double up on the necessary blooms but public objectives need unique specimens.

This game has a really fun push your luck type vibe when you reach for flowers in the hope that the gamble will pay off at end game. And needless to say it is absolutely beautiful to look at. All the components are gorgeous, and the box is definitely not a shelf-hog. For us it works at all player counts and has fast become one of my go-to solo games!

This blog was written by Favouritefoe