2024 Game of the Year?? | Gnome Hollow Review
72I saw Gnome Hollow at GAMA Expo and fell in love with it immediately - the the craziest part is that this is a homemade prototype, complete with plastic boards and MAGNETS! The gameplay is wonderfully strategic with plenty of decisions to be made and the story behind the game's creation is even better, and one that I hope to get to share one day.
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This game was loaned to us by the designer by our request, for review.
From the Publisher:
Since the beginning of time, gnomes have been the humble caretakers of nature. In secret they emerge from their underground homes to maintain meticulous rings of mushrooms known to the humanfolk as “fairy rings.” But the work must be done quickly, because as soon as a mushroom path is finished, the mushrooms are ready for picking. Who will be the cleverest gnome and harvest the most mushrooms by the end of the season?
Gnome Hollow is a spatial, tile placement, worker placement game where you grow a tabletop garden of mushrooms and flowers. Every piece is a hand painted watercolor that captures the whimsical feel of gnomes and nature.
Turns are deceptively simple: Players place tiles into the garden, and move a gnome to take a single action on their turn.
But placing a tile and taking an action can create play combinations that are intensely satisfying. Players strategically place tiles and develop rings of valuable mushrooms. Once a ring is completed they harvest each mushroom and eventually carry them to market to sell for the shiniest treasures available in the hollow.
Small mushroom rings offer small rewards. Larger mushroom rings offer richer rewards! Completing a new circle automatically increases your score. The playerboard automatically calculates your growing score every time you move a ring marker to unlock your latest reward. This means that every completed mushroom ring offers new strategic choices and important bonuses for individual players.
As you grow the garden, some rewards give players access to rare signposts. Once placed in completed rings, signposts become unique worker placement spots for any of the gnomes in the Hollow.
Wildflowers are literally wilds, and can complete any ring, or solve complicated problems during play. Planting them grants players a wildflower token. Other players can move to a flower as an action to collect that same wildflower token. When these tokens are placed into the individual players boards these become a valuable set collection strategy, while simultaneously building toward the end of the game.
Gnomes visit the Pinwheel Market to fulfill mushroom orders to gain treasure in the form of bottle-caps, buttons, feathers, crystals and skeleton keys. Each card offers two options. You can choose to fulfill the top portion to grab a bit of treasure, or fulfill the bottom to gain the most. The white part of the card gives players a mushroom trade that can be used in future turns by visiting sign posts.
Clever players will plan their strategy carefully, balancing the building of mushroom rings with trips to the market as well as expanding their personal collection of wildflowers that grow across the garden.
As the game progresses it is as much about playing a beautiful game as it is a wonderful journey to strategically outplay your opponents.
Come to Gnome Hollow and experience a peaceful garden, the thrill of competing to harvest buckets of mushrooms, and the reward of gathering in all your shiny treasures!
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Play the Game HQ a youtube channel dedicated to sharing our love of boardgames. Our flagship series, Play the Game, is a high quality multi-camera board game play through series featuring a bunch of friends gathered around the table playing board games. Play the Game takes its inspiration from other shows like Tabletop. Our Mission with Play the Game is to highlight the joy that comes when you gather around the table with friends and play a board game.
Play the Game features a dedicated board game playthrough studio with 7 cameras, a custom board game table, an awesome custom made back-lit logo on the wall, and tons of easter eggs sprinked through the studio space.
Play the Game is also the home of the Kidsplaining tutorial series, where Jarred (12) and Peyton (9) teach some of our favorite games in high quality, scripted board game tutorial videos. Kidsplaining started as a way to share our love of board games and help those who were intimidated by more complicated modern board games take a chance on new ones - because if a kid can teach it, how hard can it be?
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