This is unfortunately a pretty miserable set of games to explore, with Tea Garden the only one that wanted to draw me back. So let’s talk about other stuff instead. My favourite new-to-me series this year was catching up on Severance – it has that Twin Peaks mystery on mystery slow-pace feel, always wondering where on earth it was going next. And my favourite new-to-me artist would be Ethel Cain – there’s an ethereal vibe there that I just sink into and enjoy.

Right, back to this set of games if we must …

BABYLON (2024): Rank 4299, Rating 7.2

The major attractions are the cool components, the neat way the box insert is used to layer the tile draft, and the 3D garden construction that looks amazing at end of game. The aim is to pick tiles that give you a ton of pedestals (on which to place the tiles) and to place each tile such that its symbols line up with another tile’s and you can build a feature across the two tiles. And as you advance, come up with a plan to build your tiles as high as possible (they can’t go directly above each other), without covering up your point-scoring features, because features on higher levels score more points. The AP therefore gets higher the deeper you go and that’s the major downside. The planning challenge is engaging (7) but essentially abstract (6). I think I achieved enough satisfaction from my first garden to sate me.

Rating: 6

ENDLESS WINTER: PALEOAMERICANS (2022): Rank 317, Rating 7.6

There are only 4 action types and 12 actions in the game (over 4 rounds) but working out the best action is a complicated sequence of working out what cards to spend to fuel that action, and whether you’ll trigger enough bonuses to ensure enough resources for future actions. Which makes for take-backs, re-starts, and downtime. You want to buy a ton of cards – not only do they get more powerful but you get end-game points for thinning your deck which is unusual. And then do you focus on hunting card sets for end-game points or building map presence for end-round benefits? Learning the systems and how to maximise VPs, and managing the resource struggle, kept me on my toes but there’s little theme engagement, it felt more like something I had to work at, and the downtime was enough to say I’d rather move on.

Rating: 6

EXHIBITION: 10TH CENTURY (2021): Rank 7160, Rating 6.6 – Joustra / van Dalen / van Moorsel

You’re picking cards from the display to fill out sets on your tableau, where each set must be made up of different colour cards (or the same colour) and be placed in ascending order (the cards have years on them). It gets increasingly harder to place because the card you want right now may force you to pick from a selection next turn that has nothing you can use. Or you’ll be lucky and it has something you can use. The winner will be the repeat-luckiest because the lookahead and card assessment is trivial. It’s fine for being short-ish at 20 mins but you’re too much at the mercy of the flop for mine. NB 3 designers.

Rating: 6

INK (2023): Rank 5718, Rating 6.9

Take a tile from the draft, add it to your tableau such that it extends a colour to make it big enough to meet a size objective, and then score it by filling that colour with meeples so it can’t score again. The bigger the area, the bigger the bonus action you get, and bonus actions are paramount to gaining advantage. Repeat ad nauseum. It’s so abstract. And uninteresting. And repetitive. And as fun as watching ink dry.

Rating: 5

MY SHELFIE (2022): Rank 2766, Rating 6.5 – Dunstan / Walker-Harding

Pick tiles from around the edge of the display (your choice is limited) and drop them into a single column on your Connect 4 type rack, aiming to get specific colours into the positions your personal goal requires. Plus making colour groups as big as possible. Plus racing to meet the common goals asap. Trade-off city in other words, with each turn offering a decision based on what tiles are available. It works, but filling my rack with colour matches doesn’t overly excite me.

Rating: 6

PERGOLA (2025): Rank 2473, Rating 7.3

Sets of things to add to your garden move along the action track. Take a set, do the action. 15 times. There are 4 types of plants, 4 types of insects, which all pair up and score in different ways. The actions allow you to take more stuff or move stuff to increase its score. Work towards end-game multipliers for whatever you’ve gathered most of. On a turn you simply take the best of what’s on offer based on what you’ve collected so far. Repeat. It’s a simple game made complicated by the multitude of ways to score. There’s little need to play again because the next game will feel much the same as the first, maybe just scoring different things.

Rating: 6

SKULL QUEEN (2024): Rank 5104, Rating 7.3

Bid how many points you’ll aim to win, or aim to lose, in each colour. Despite it being must-follow standard tricking, a colour will score its highest and its lowest cards as long as there are two of that colour in a trick, even if they’re offsuits. As the hand is played out, points are won and lost in all sorts of luck-of-the-spread ways, with capriciousness overwhelming any decent hand assessment skills. Especially when you add in wild cards which allow a select few to override or duck even if you’ve counted a suit down. Let’s put this in the light fun category.

Rating: 6

TEA GARDEN (2024): Rank 2251, Rating 7.6 – Holek

Buy more powerful cards, shed your starting cards, aim to build a deck of cards with high action strength numbers and secondary actions you want to specialise in, all of which earn VPs and bonus abilities in various ways. A primary goal is to build up your production of leaves which are your currency for buying cards and other VPs in various ways. Managing your hand each round is neat – maybe 2 high strength actions, or 1 high and a few low, etc – where the benefit of more actions is getting more secondary actions (which are poi up nt worthy and not insignificant). There are different strategies to explore, turns can be clever (getting bonuses to allow this to do that), rules weren’t too bad. I’m not sure how much long-term replay there is but happy to play again to find out.

Rating: 7

Thoughts of other Opinionated Gamers:

Tea Garden- I was pleasantly surprised by this one and enjoyed my couple of plays so far. Plenty of actions to choose from and the card play is interesting. I like it! Lorna

Tea Garden- I enjoyed Tea Garden as well. Plenty going on but not head burning stuff. Very pleasant, like a cup of tea should be. Alan

Ink- I had a different experience. I played my first game in Essen and enjoyed the evolution of the game. Of course it’s abstract but like Framework, it grows on you, or at least me. I enjoy the variety of the bonuses and the mixes of these that cause different plans to evolve. Alan