Rosenberg's new tile laying game has some weird shapes! - Garden Lake Board Game Review
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Transcript
Hello everyone. This is Sonovan
and this is Joe Harris
and you're watching Board Gaming Ramblings
and today we are taking a look at Garden Lake. This is a new game coming out at Spiel. Yes, this year very soon. Very, very soon it is coming. This was sent to us from the publisher. Thank you so much for that and we hope to see you at Spiel. If you're going, please let us know in the comments. We are excited to see you. If you do see us wandering around, please give us a secret sign. We're going to be there every single day. We're going to be from Wednesday to Monday. And if you see us, say hi. If you want to make sure to find us, we will be at the Sheila Fox Aora Allion booth area from 10 to 2 on Saturday and 1 to 5:00 on Sunday. So that's like a surefire bet on where to find us. We will be demoing games. If you want to play something, let us know and come by, say hi there. I don't think there's like a I don't think there are signups. You just have to wait for a place. H But we would love to play something. And if you are busy, please come and say hi anyways. Like we will be happy to say hi. Uh, with that out of the way, let's talk about Garden Lake. This is a new polyomino title drafting game from Rosenberg. He has made quite a few of these. Now, this one is different in some ways, similar in some ways. I'm going to give you a brief overview. You're going to have this board where you want to place these pieces. Every player is going to have 16 pieces. We have play some, place them on the board. And on your turn, you're going to take one of your available pieces. And you're always going to have four available pieces to you. You're going to have these two pieces. And then you're going to have the this piece basically on the player to your right and this piece basically of from the player to your left. So you're always gonna so basically when you play this
game these are not your pieces. Somebody else can take those pieces and that's kind of part of the strategy as well and you will basically take a piece. You will tie is going to be lily pads or koofish up and you will place it somewhere or at least try to place it somewhere where it doesn't destroy every single plan that you had. and also where it fits kind of there.
So, what you want to do is a couple of things. You want to fill in this because when you fill in this, you will get a bonus piece. When you fill in this, you will get this bonus piece. You want to make rows and columns because when you do the first time you get in a row or a column that goes out to one of these bonus pieces, you're going to get a bonus piece. And as you might already see, these bonus pieces are the only pieces with normal shapes in the game. And what you want to do is also to surround these because when you do you will get these uh super tiles and I don't remember their names because landscape. Thank you. Landscape because you're the theme person. Landscape tiles out here which might score you bonus points but also helps you fill out the rows and columns. So you try to do this because you will score points for the rows and columns, but you will also score points for areas of seven or more of the same symbol adjacent to each other. And if that area is also adjacent to a landscape tile, you score two bonus points for that. And that is basically the whole game. You're going to continue drafting tiles until you can't place anything else. Then you're going to pause and the other players are going to place until they can't place anything more. And then you will stop. And the player who has the most points is the winner. When you only have one piece, you always draw a piece from the bag or from another player if there's not any more left in the bag. And that is what you're going to do. You're going to try to score the most points and see if you can manage to place these tiles anywhere.
I like the drafting in this game. I like that your uh your available pieces is never like nothing is safe. Somebody can come and snag these. And in the beginning, I was just like, "Nope, that's not my piece." I had to kind of learn that they're not mine. Yeah. But I think that is interesting because if I I don't want this piece at all, I can hope that somebody else takes it because I really wanted this piece. And I I like that mechanism.
I like it. Especially in multiplayer, it works okay with two as well, but multiplayer it works better. As I already hinted to, what makes this game different? What makes this game not like all the other ones is that the shapes are horribly shaped. Like if you are a person who wants to do build perfectly, you're going to feel infuriated playing this game and then it will feel very good when you manage to build pretty perfectly because this bonus task will help you with that. But every single piece like when we played many times we were like this is horrible, this is horrible. What is the least horrible piece that I can place?
Yeah. Because the mechanisms are very straightforward. Yes. It would just be like take a piece, put it somewhere. Oh, that fit. Yeah, that's pretty nice, actually.
No, because it's not adjacent to those.
Oh, that's true.
So, it's like almost
Yes. But we've had some really long AP moments because
we really want to build in the most optimized way possible. And it's really hard, but it's not impossible. We've had some games where we really almost covered this entire thing up. Um, but yeah, these are pretty important to make that happen.
I feel like this makes it go from an infuriating experience. I'm not saying that like it's a a bad experience, but from like a frustrating like I can't make this puzzle work and like, oh, but if I manage now to continue out this, I will be able to place this so that then I fill out this piece so I can get this so then I can place that. It helps me with scoring. And basically you you always can lock one of these here like you can unlock one there so you can you can save it but if you get another one you have to place one of them and all of these pieces these are the pieces that will very much help you with scoring the lily pads and the score or the the koi pods or koiish basically because don't it feels very bad taking one of these and not placing it adjacent to something else that will help you score like a a bonus or a area of seven or more.
I agree. I like that you can ignore these shapes because sometimes I get a really hang up that I need to absolutely surround this perfectly and get that shape. Sometimes that's more of a bother that is actually helping you. So I really enjoy that I can just like be like screw it and place something on top of it and you also are not like you don't have to place adjacent to something that you placed before. that that's also a thing that I do like.
And this box says 45 plus minutes. And I think I'm happy it doesn't say like 30 to 45 because I feel like that is a time frame that this kind of game would probably say on the box is 30 to 45. I think 45 plus is more of a a actual game length. Uh it is a 45 plus game because if you care if you just like do this, I'm going to place that over there and then after four tiles you're done. Then it's going to be shorter. But maybe then the game isn't for you because like or you just don't care. That's that's okay also. But it's just like it is a pretty tight puzzle and because of all the tiles are horribly shaped, it will be hard. There is a variant on the other side. Basically, I'm just going to do this
on the other side of this where there's not any landscape tiles and you can basically take a landscape tile when you want to and place it. So, it makes it the game
very much easier. I feel like more like a family family variants. Uh so for me that it's not like a variant we wanted to try out, but I feel like yeah, like the tightness is what makes this game interesting.
Don't you agree? So who do you think this game is for?
I think if you like Polyomos and you like puzzles, you you enjoy a light game because like the rules are super light, but you want a light game with a little bit of a little bit of crunch.
Like it's not a lot.
It is that we love puzzling. Yes, we love these kind of puzzle games. Our brains are just like really wanting to and you always want to do perfect in these kind of games. Like you have that even more than me. Uh even though I managed to do pretty well in this game. Oh, yeah. You you have that where you're just like, "Oh, it hurts so much to place something that no, I can't fill in later." And for example, this one isn't too bad because then if I manage to get one of these, I can then place that in there. And if I fill it this like there is a lot of interesting things, but it is a very light game. So if you are looking like it's a touch up from some of the other uh games in that like u design in that kind of category but they are in that category like the puzzle games from Rosenberg. So if you are looking for that this might be for you.
If you're not looking for that this might not be for you.
Thank you. I will say that for me personally, I will enjoy this game with people who are in the same amount of I care about this game as me because I don't think it will be fun to be the person who are just like I'm placing that there. I'm just having fun and then I have to wait for three hours while I because that's usually me sitting there and being like I need 10 minutes on my turn people. Uh and also um people who uh build very inefficiently might also be out of the game very early and sitting just waiting for the other players. I would recommend this for group that you think, oh my my people that I play with, they're kind of similar to me. They're either just like we boom boom boom or we all sit and think and that's the fun of it.
So, do you want to do final thoughts?
Yeah, I really enjoy this game. um even though it's very frustrating sometimes as you mentioned because you want to do all the things at the same time and the the fact that that is very hard to accomplish and also a lot of times I can't do all the things that I want to I have to choose that's what makes the game so interesting and fun. So I I I want it to be that frustrating. I wanted to be in freerating and also I think it's fun that it's not that the usual polyomino shapes that you see all the time. They're like every single one of them are unique. They're they're uh have the same Yes, they cover the exact same space
but in a different shape. So, I'm going to give this a 6.5. I enjoy it.
Golden Lake I think is good. I think it's a bit too long, but I think it's a good game. I I don't think it's going to be like the I think it's a bit too harsh for some people.
Oh, yeah.
So, I think some people are going to see this and they're going to be like, "Nope, that's not for me." But for a lot of us, this is going to be one that you're going to have a lot of fun with because it is it feels so good when you manage to find that one piece that just fits perfectly like this one doesn't do. And all of that is a good thing. I think I'm going to land on a seven. I think it's a good game. I enjoy it. I'm very happy for it and I I do think I want to keep it
because we haven't kept
I think any of the other Rosenberg tiling games like this.
Yeah.
I think we have like we have the puzzle ones but we don't have the tile lang.
I just want a puzzle. It's so satisfying.
So that's going to be the end. That's going to be the end. It was 6.57 from me and you watched it. If you did like it, you can subscribe. If you didn't like it, you can subscribe because it's
cool. Yes, that is it. We hope to see you at HPL. Show us the secret sign and come and find us. We hope to see you there. Thank you so much for watching. I'm Johannes. I'm Cinema.
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