Review #28: Photosynthesis

# of Players: 2-4
Playtime: 1-2 Hours

Core Mechanic: Action Selection

Theme: Planting
Type: Euro

Weight: Medium

Year: 2017

Rating: 8*

Towards the end of 2017, everyone was raving about this gorgeous and well-themed abstract game. It also looked light enough to be a gateway game but with some depth, which I am always on the lookout for. This was also the year for Azul and Sagrada, so a banner year for gateway abstracts. Could the table presence of Photosynthesis propel it to the top?

Each player is a different species of trees trying to gain dominance in the forest. Each round, players will take turns collecting light points from the trees they have (Photosynthesis Phase) and taking actions using these light points (Life Cycle Phase). Play is centered around a board where the trees will grow and a rotating sun that will shine light on different parts of this forest. The game continues until the sun has made three revolutions around the board, at which point the player with the most victory points wins (these are different from light points).

The positioning of your trees with the ever changing position of the sun is important for collecting light points. Players will gain light points for each of their trees that sunlight reaches and gain more light points for bigger trees, but if your tree is blocked by another player's tree, i.e. is in the shadow of that tree, then that tree of yours will not collect any light points. Similar to bigger trees being able to collect more light points, bigger trees are also able to cast larger shadows and block more spaces, but also thematically smaller trees cannot block bigger ones.

During the Life Cycle Phase, each player will take as many actions as he or she can before play moves to the next player. This includes buying seeds or trees, planting seeds that have been bought, growing trees that have been bought, and harvesting large trees for victory points. These actions all require light points to take, so it requires players to carefully plan how they will use the light points they gained in the previous phase. When planting seeds, you need to be in spaced adjacent to your small trees if using them as the starting point but you can plant seeds farther away from your larger trees. This feels very thematic, as does not being able to plant seeds or grow trees in locations that are in the shadow of another tree, which is a rule that is part of the advanced variation but that I would always recommend playing. In the advanced variation, the game is also played for 4 revolutions of the sun.

When harvesting large trees for points, you will collect one of the face down scoring tokens matching the soil type of the space that the large tree is being harvested from. The spaces towards the center of the board is the better soil, meaning the values on the scoring tokens will be higher. This means that players will be competing to get closer to the center of the board, but it is also more likely that trees at the center of the board will be blocked from the sun by trees out towards the perimeter. Due to this board play, there is a lot of player interaction and a bit of take that as players are blocking each other, but the rotating sun helps to not keep you in the shadows for too long and adds a bit of a forgiving element.

The best part of the game is how thematic everything feels and the visual appeal of the game. This also makes the game a lot easier to teach and learn. So even though I think the game is closer to medium in weight, it makes an excellent gateway game because of its components and small learning curve. Therefore, I think it is a great game to add to the Gateway collection. The depth of strategy also makes it a good fit for the Middleweight collection. Finally, I think this game could belong in anyone's Essential and Collector collections.