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Growing Season is a two-player board game inspired by resource management video games where the player runs a farm; such as the Harvest Moon saga, or the popular indie game Stardew Valley.
Growing Season is an accessible and straightforward game that mixes deck building and resource management. It serves as a perfect introduction to more complex board games, or as a perfect game for quick games on the couch, it doesn't require much preparation but hides a lot of depth in the optimization of the hands and resources.
A normal game of Growing Season lasts about 35 minutes, during which players will build and grow their farms. Players will start with three plots of land and not much more than the efforts of their farmers, and by the end of the game they will run a huge and automated farm, with which they'll be able to tackle the most complicated and lucrative crops, using sprinklers, a harvester, and with several barns.
—description from the designer
Growing Season | Overview
- Successful on Gamefound
- Multiple player counts and variants available (2-4 player, solo, long/short game)
- Advanced tools and farm upgrades add depth
- Fishing and mining offer different risk/reward options
- Asymmetric board option for different player experiences
- Fishing can result in getting nothing if you push too far
- Solo mode involves racing against an AI and facing event cards
- Solo mode timer can lead to losing the game if the deck shuffles too often
- Farming
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- action selection — On their turn, players go through phases including drawing cards, watering/harvesting, mining/discarding, and buying/upgrading.
- Card Play — Players draw cards that are either irrigation or harvest cards, and play them to perform actions like watering and harvesting crops.
- Deck Building — Players start with identical decks of 15 cards and can upgrade them by purchasing new cards at the blacksmith, replacing existing ones.
- push-your-luck — The fishing mechanic involves drawing cards with fish symbols, with the risk of losing everything if a 'big fish' is drawn.
- Resource Management — Players manage money to buy new crops and upgrades, and decide how much money to put on a track for victory points.
- Set Collection — Harvesting specific crops of a certain size (e.g., 2 or 3) can provide bonuses, like an extra two coins for strawberries.
- Variable player powers — The solo mode has an AI opponent called Natsume Corporation, and there are asymmetric boards for younger or less experienced players.
- Worker Placement — Players place money on a track to earn farm upgrades, with the number of opportunities to do so being limited.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- Growing Season, which is a card game all about farming.
- We are rival farmers putting down fruits and vegetables in our plots, expanding our farms, getting equipment, animals, upgrading our gear, maybe going mining, maybe even going fishing sometimes in a race to earn the most money.
- It's a push your luck kind of mini game.
- The goal is still 100 coins for both of you.