October 24, 2020 – As part of a 2021 lineup showcase by publisher Grail Games, one point of interest was the Botanic Gardens Board Game Announcement. The game is based on the Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens which a very important place for Sydney scientists, historically and culturally. It is very far out, so we do not know much and have nothing to look at, but given the subject matter, it surely will be beautiful.
The game was designed by Matthew Dunstan & Brett J Gilbert who collectively designed the popular title Elysium (2018). The artist is Kerri Aitken who did the Boomerangs (2010s) and Tichu (1991). You are drafting cards to lay out on the tableau, the Botanic Gardens. Each turn, one of the visitors will walk the gardens in one long row and will score things based upon what they see.
The cool thing about this (besides the caliber of design and artists) it is going to have layers upon layers of variety and different ways to play. It is very accessible and easy enough for the whole family to dive into. You draw a card, you lay it down, and you score; but there are so many things that then let you build on that. There are special Sydney landmarks, and different ways to score. Think about Sushi Go Party! where you can swap in and out all the different scoring objectives game to game, it is like that.
Simple. Pure. Streamlined. Beautiful. And it looks great on the table.
Santa Monica from AEG games came out recently and that follows the same idea. Where there are beachfront cards or boardwalk cards and you draft them in two rows on your tableau. This is similar except there are three rows – along the water, through the middle of the grass and near the edge down by the city. Here, you also score every round, because of how the person walks through the gardens.
There is no release plan or art to show yet!
See The Other Titles Mentioned During This Announcement
- Hibachi / Hibachi: Hot & Spicy (by Marco Teubner)
- Whale Riders (by Reiner Knizia)
- Yellow & Yangtze: The Royal Palace / Card Game (Reiner Knizia)
- Medici: Reformation (Reiner Knizia)
- Silicon Valley (Scott Almes)
- Fjords (Franz-Benno Delonge)
- ChuHan (Tom Lehmann)
- Elevenses: The Guilty Party (David Harding)
Title discussed in announcement video [11:52 – 14:52]:
