Similarly, sometimes sacrificing a turn (saving your LPs and passing early) to then have a mega-turn during the next Life Cycle Phase can make a massive difference. While we’ve already said Photosynthesis is a great family board game, we won’t claim that it’s well suited for everyone in the family. Note that in a two-player game, the fourth leaf token in the center is removed and you can only score up to the third leaf ring. This leaves you less room to score.

Players can choose to collect Scoring Tokens by ending the life-cycle of their Large Trees. To do so costs 4 light points per Large Tree.The player with the most points wins the game. In the event of a tie, the winner is the player with the most seeds and trees on the main board. If there is still a tie, both players win. In Photosynthesis you are sowing the seeds to grow a beautiful woodland. As the sun moves around the board each day, you will harvest more sunlight with larger trees, which might overshadow others in the forest. You can spend LPs to ‘grow’ your current trees on the board. Seeds grow into small trees, small trees into medium-sized ones, and mediums into tall trees. It’s like watching Mother Nature doing her thing (if Mother Nature was a giant hand, swooping into a wooded area to swap the trees about). Rounds are split into two phases – the Photosynthesis Phase (where players count how many Light Points they’ve earned from their planted trees), and the Life Cycle Phase (where players then get to spend said Light Points in an action-selection manner).

As you’ve likely noticed, the game does an outstanding job of capturing its title. The way more trees capture more light allowing your species to thrive creates a beautiful, circular mimic of a real ecosystem on the board, and this also makes it easier to teach – everything just makes sense to people because it fits with real life.

Setup

Between Photosynthesis’ unique mechanics and the fact that the game has a number of different actions to choose from, I was a little curious about how difficult the game would be to play. Photosynthesis is probably more difficult than most mainstream and family games and yet it is still pretty easy to play. I would guess that the game could be taught within 10-15 minutes to most players. The game has a number of different mechanics to learn. Most of them are pretty straightforward though. The game has a recommended age of 8+, but I would say 10+ is more appropriate. The game is not particularly difficult to play, but it is the type where it will take quite a bit into your first game for players to really start understanding the game’s strategy as they learn from mistakes they made earlier in the game. After a game or two though I don’t see any players having problems with the game. This player collected four Scoring Tokens in the game worth 69 points (22 + 18 + 16 + 13). They will also score one point for their remaining Light Points for a total of 70 points. Advanced Game If you harvest a tree from the main board, and you don’t have free space on your player board you will lose it for the rest of the game. Photosynthesis Game Strategy #1: King of the Forest What to Focus on: While playing Photosynthesis it was obvious that the developer really tried to merge the theme and gameplay. I don’t know if the theme or gameplay was designed first, but I think it would have been hard to find a better combination. The collecting mechanic doesn’t make a lot of sense with the theme, but all of the other gameplay mechanics feel like they were genuinely crafted with the theme in mind. I am genuinely not a big fan of themes in board games as it mostly just feels like window dressing. In Photosynthesis the theme and gameplay feel as if the game wouldn’t be the same if you took one of them away.