Tree-mendous!
Offshoots was given to me by ZATU to demonstrate at the excellent ZATUCON 25 at the Bedford Hotel, Balham. At first I was a bit non plussed. After all, it was described as “A Creative Game Of Balance” a manual dexterity game with echoes of Jenga. I, myself, on the other hand, am a very large man in my seventies. However, always keen to try new things and admiring Offshoots green credentials I gave it my best shot and was rewarded by enjoying a game of simple delights and zen like pleasures as a stream of enthusiastic tree growers joined in through the day.
Take a Leaf
So what is it all about? The compact box (20cm x 10cm x 10cm) holds a 2 piece “trunk” and base plus 75 wooden “leaves”. The two halves of the trunk slot together and are then firmly pushed into the base and, joy of joys, will fit back in the box after playing without having to be disassembled (I’m looking at you Everdell!).
Place said trunk on the table and then take turns to add a leaf. The smooth, glossy, green leaves are all identical and are “bone” shaped with slotted ends. 4 slots on one end and 2 on the other. The simple rule is that you must slot the leaf in using the 2 slot side, sloping upwards, leaving the 4 slot uppermost. This means there are greater options for subsequent additions. You carry on slotting leaves until someone makes it all fall and that’s basically it.
Easy-leaf Done
You can use two hands to add your leaf, you can touch and rotate the tree as you wish. Once you’ve touched a leaf to another you must place it there firmly. If a leaf, or several, falls off you have got to replace it or them somewhere else. But if the tree itself goes, that’s it.
The winner is the last player who successfully placed a leaf before the Fall. Though if, heaven forfend, you were playing Offshoots as a drinking game you might just ask the one who caused the crash to drink up!
I don’t want to stretch out this review to make Offshoots sound any more complicated than it really is. It is so straight forward that during my demonstration if I left for a while I’d come back to find that new people had started playing, teaching themselves. Self-seeded trees if you will.
There is a bit of a knack to getting the leaves in (my preferred method is to get the slot lined up and rotate the leaf vertcally until it slots home) but you soon get the hang of it. It gets easier after a few plays as any varnish build up wears off.
When you’ve finished it all strips down and fits back in the box. Easy set up, easy teach, easy put away.
Diversi-tree
Equally appealing to young and old. I’m a grandfather and my nearly 4 year old granddaughter enjoyed it too. It says on the box 8+ age wise which seems unreasonable to me. Though you might need to watch out when the tree falls and older players might want to guard their glassware.
A whole range of people played at ZATU Con and it was so relaxing when playing we were able to have a bit of conversation for once, much more than I have had in previous conventions. I’ve also played after dinner or out on the garden table, though not when the wind blows!
Whilst the Offshoots box says up to 12 players this might get a bit boring as you’d only get to put on 6 or 7 leaves but that’s up to you.
If you complete all 75 leaves you are supposed to take one off and re-attach it elsewhere but we found that it was such a nice achievement to get them all on we’d just stop and admire it.
Then stage the inevitable “Timber!”
“Panto” Pete Bartlam is a senior games player of over 70 years, loves playing games, hosting quizzes and he’s even writing a panto again. Oh! No he’s not!
