Evenglow Review

0:00 Take on the role of an alchemist tending your garden deep in the forest, creating potions and planning carefully as your grove continues to grow in even glow. Thanks for joining me here at Tant Studio D. I'm Kevin Delp. Even Glow is a light strategy tile laying game for one to four players that takes about 30 to 45 minutes to play. It's published by the OP who sent us this copy to review. You can also check out our full playthrough of this game on our channel. It looks like a pretty straightforward tile laying game, but there is more than meets the eye when you dive in. You're actually building two gardens at the same time. I'll do a quick overview of the game. I'll show you some of the intricacies, some of the things I liked and didn't like, and then we'll conclude this video. Even Glow is played over a number of turns, playing cards, and placing tiles on your personal board.

1:04 Trying to arrange the tiles in the correct patterns to gain potions and scoring points. The game can end one of two ways. A plant tile group is gone, or if there are no plant cards left. I usually find that it's because there's no cards left. It seems that there are plenty of plant tiles in the game. Then you're going to move on to final scoring to see who wins. Let's look a little bit more in depth for this game. The game comes with player boards, plant tokens, cards, and more. Each turn, a player's got to play a plant card to the table, orienting the card how they choose. That player will take tiles matching the two pictures facing the active player side. All other players get the other two tiles that are shown. Then everyone takes those two tiles and places one on their moonlight garden, the one on the left side, and the other on the sunlight garden, the one on the right. But here's the important part. When you get those two plant tiles, you don't get just to put them anywhere you want. You have to put them into the matching positions on the opposite sides of your garden. Now, there are six different types of plants, and each one scores a little bit differently. Some want you to build groups. Some want you to have specific sets of tiles and some care about where those tiles are located on your board.

2:21 So maybe I got a vine and a leaf. I choose to position them on my board and those two plants have to occupy that same position on the opposite side of my garden. And this is where even glow gets really, really cool because maybe the vine is exactly where I want it on one side of the board. It's going to connect to this big group I've been building. Great. But when I put it there, I'm also forced to put the leaf on the opposite side. And maybe the leaf is terrible for that garden. So, you're trying to build each side the best way to get the maximum points. And I really, really enjoy that. Another thing I really enjoy is doing videos like this. The Tantrum House team has been doing reviews, overviews, playthroughs, and a whole bunch more for years now, 12 years on YouTube, and we're about to go into our next season, lucky season 13. and we need your support. Would you take a moment to check out our current Kickstarter campaign running until September 25th? The app actually donated a pretty interesting item that you might want to take a look at, which I actually have and I'm going to go get it right now. Be right back.

3:32 I'm back. It's a whole game. Uh it is called Teleustrations to Go. This is a traveling Tellustrations game. Um, man, it looks pretty cool. This is a promotional edition and we love to get it into your hands. So, go check it out on our Kickstarter page. We love playing Teleustrations. Fun party drawing game and now you can put it in your pocket. Well, almost put in your pocket, but super easy to travel with. Definitely check that out. I'll add a link uh to our Kickstarter page in the comment section of this video so you can link right to it. All right, back to Even Glow. The other interesting part of the game is the actual playing of the playing cards. Can I play the ones that help me and not my opponents? A little back and forth where you're sometimes get exactly what you need. And other times you're sitting there, okay, I really don't want either of these plans, but I guess this is what's going to happen. So, you're really just looking at the cards that are in your hand and trying to pick the best one. I think probably the part of Even Glow that surprised me the most is that it's not a mean game, but there's very satisfying indirect interaction. You're not really attacking anybody. You're not destroying their garden, but you can definitely get another player a pair of plants that's going to make their life a lot more difficult. And because everyone's playing their tiles simultaneously, the game really does move pretty quickly.

5:02 you're not just sitting around waiting a long time. There's also potion cards in the game and they're a great addition because they give you something ways to like mitigate uh your bad placements as you create the certain patterns with your plants. You can earn different potions that let you move or exchange tiles or manipulate what you're taking from the draft. And I think the potions are important because they keep the game from becoming, well, I got the wrong plan. I'm just stuck and I can't do anything about it. you still have some ways to fix your garden throughout the game. Each potion will let you do different things. And they also will score you points at the end of the game. Not only on the card, but also if you can collect sets of three different kinds of potions, that's going to give you points. And that's something I appreciate in a puzzle game like this.

5:51 The decisions you're making really do matter, but the game gives you tools to recover when things don't really go as planned. All right, a couple of critiques. Um, the player count I think is really going to change the game experience. When you're the active player, um, you have a lot more control because you get to choose which pair of plants you want. But when you're when it's someone else's turn and you're not the active player, you're getting whatever they didn't take. So, at four players, uh, that means you're only the active player about a quarter of the time. At two players, you're making that cho choice much more frequently, and I felt that immediately. there's a lot more control on how your board will look since you're the active player every other time in a two-player game. So, I think even is a game where player count really does matter. Another thing, um there's a slight smell that I felt that I smelled initially on those tiles, but it wears off time. It could have just been my game, but don't really know. It [snorts] could have been like the foam smell just really sort of irritated me a little bit. So, likes, dislikes, likes. Here we go. And even though the mirror rule means that every placement affects both gardens simultaneously and that's really like the core of this game. It's a symmetry puzzle sort of disguised as a garden game. And I kind of like that.

7:09 Simple gameplay but really thinky. Visually the game is great. The watercolor artwork is from Clementine and Kempardo. I hope I said that right. Who also worked on games like Worms and Origin Story. Uh, the artwork definitely gives the game that really pleasant story bookl like look. The components are also plentiful. There's 264 plant tiles and they have that spongy foam feel to them that makes the game feel really unique. There's a lot of stuff in the box for the game that's pretty light. The rule books laid out well and the player aid is printed right on the player boards which I think is super amazing. Now even even glow itself the name you have the dark uh the moonlight side and the sunlight side I guess I don't know how they came up with the name but evening and glow sort of has that same idea I don't know maybe just genius so even glow feels um like some other games I'll compare them to things like uh games like Calico Cascadia um you there's some similar similarities there you've got the simple tile but you're trying to create patterns that score in different ways and you're really trying to make the most of the pieces that you're given. I think this is a really good choice for someone who likes games like Calico, Cascadia, Harmonies, or other tile laying pattern building games, but want something with a little bit of a different puzzle. It's also a game I could see working really

8:41 well for families because the rules aren't really complicated. Um, but there is enough strategic depth here for the adults who aren't going to just completely check out while they're playing with their uh, young kids. There's also a solo mode. Um, so this isn't a game that requires you to find three other people. Um, if you really want to play it by yourself. Like I said, the mirror system is a unique part of Evening Glow, but it's not really reinventing tile placement. It It's understandable. It's not incredibly heavy, but it does make you think. It's beautiful. It's approachable. It plays quickly. There's a lot going for this game. So, if you enjoy lighter tile laying games and you're looking for something that feels familiar, I think Evenlow is worth checking out. For me, uh the biggest selling point is that mirror image. It's simple enough to understand and it creates interesting decisions throughout the entire game.

9:31 So, let me know down in the comments what tile games do you enjoy. Or if you tried Even Glow, let me know that too in the comments. Thank you for watching. Please like and subscribe.