Vicious Gardens is a card game about becoming a Master Gardener by planting the garden that will earn you the most Victory Points. In essence, it is a tactical hand management and set taking game, with a nicely balanced mix of strategy and luck.
The game is driven primarily by card draws, with the option of drawing either Plant cards or Specialist cards at the end of every turn. The Specialist cards mitigate the randomness of card drawing somewhat and add more player agency and strategy to the game. They also provide a juicy element of sabotage as some of them allow you to mess with your opponents hands and garden plots or protect your own or earn bonus points.
The game ends when any one player has accumulated three Victory Cards triggering the End of Season. Most Victory Cards have a different means of acquiring them, and as they are acquired this shifts the goals and tactics of the players. Once the End of Season is triggered by a player, all other players have one round to obtain as many Victory Cards and bonus points as they are able to.
The game is delivered with a healthy dose of humour that is present not only on the cards text but also via the cards and components incredible, wacky artwork. This definitely suits the intended vibe and everyone I showed the game to were all in agreement as to its charm.
As a horticulturalist and artist myself I was drawn to the game by the art and concept alone, and could anticipate what sort of experience I would get from playing this game as I ordered it. I was not disappointed when I received my copy and had my first play-through.
Vicious Gardens accommodates 1-6 players with an option for co-operative team play. As I am mostly a solo gamer I played my first game in the dedicated solo mode and found that it plays exceptionally well, making for an addictive and highly replayable game-play loop. The game only really functions as a multiplayer experience so you play against Fern, a ghostly gardener that you also control on her turn. This was super easy to implement and didn’t feel like a chore or that I was simply playing two handed. There was no way I was going to lose to Fern! (Even though she did manage to beat me a few times). I found the difficulty to be fair but not too easy, with options in the booklet to increase difficulty through variable modes of play.
I also played with my core gaming group, (partner and child), and found it to be just as, if not more, enjoyable. According to popular opinion online, this game really shines at 4-5 players but I did not have the chance to experience this. With its simple rules and gameplay and fast-paced nature I can see how this would be accurate, although as stated I had a thoroughly good time even playing in solo mode against the ghostly gardener.
The box promises an experience that combines the feeling of being an accomplished gardener whilst also being an ultra-competitive jerk who will destroy and undermine their opponents at any given chance, and it delivers on this promise. While the take-that mechanism isn’t enjoyable for all types of players, I and my core gaming group are rather partial to it and make use of it whenever we can weasel an advantage, or even just to trip our opponents up. This being said, you do not have to interact so meanly with your fellow players as the Specialist cards also offer up a slew of purely beneficial effects for the player.
The box includes some beautiful high quality wooden components that are optional to play with, which is a nice addition as sometimes you just want to set up a game as quickly as possible, but they're so nice I’ve not yet played a game without them.
The rulebook is well written and easy to follow and the game is super simple to learn and teach which, in my opinion, is a sign of a great game. Couple this with the randomness of the card draws, plus the variability of the different Victory Cards and Specialist cards and you have a game with high replayability.
All in all, I found Vicious Gardens to be a very satisfying and enjoyable experience that balanced tactics, light strategy, player interaction, fun and tension incredibly well. I can see myself bringing this one to the table for quite some years to come.
