Gloomies
- Board's Eye View
- 42 minutes ago
- 3 min read
Football pundits often describe a soccer match as a game of two halves. Gloomies has no connection with soccer but it literally is a game of two halves, with the first phase of the game setting up play for a second phase that follows different rules. That may make Gloomies sound more complicated than it is: in fact, it's a light easy-to-teach family game from Ravensburger but with enough depth to appeal too to more seasoned gamers.
Despite the title, there's nothing gloomy about the theme or appearance of this game: the eponymous Gloomies are space aliens who like to adorn themselves with flowers. In the first half of the game players will be playing cards to place the corresponding flowers out on the matching spaces on a grid. You can plant 1-3 flowers but they must all be in the same row and, of course, they must follow in sequence: you can't leave any gaps. You collect a bonus token in the column that corresponds to the last flower you placed; so you might choose to place out fewer flowers than you could in order to secure a particular token. At the end of your turn you can pick up two cards from the market display; or just one if it's a card showing a hybrid that can be played as either of two colours. The tokens variously offer 'stardust' which you can collect for a set collection bonus, 'little helpers' that you can trade in to plant an additional flower or pick up an extra card, and Gloomie cards that can contribute to scoring in the second phase. Play continues in the first phase until all the rows have been filled at least up to the line on the board (ie: when there are at least five flowers in every row). Players then score in that phase for any stardust collected and for the cards they've played: 1 point per card, but that's doubled for any flower/colour of which you have more than four (six in a two-player game).
For the second phase, players flip their player boards and the tokens they collected are also flipped and move to the bottom of the grid. In this second phase, players will be playing their cards to harvest flowers from the grid. Likewise there may be bonus tiles to collect if there's one in the column that corresponds to the last flower you pick. The bonuses will either be more stardust or additional flowers. All the flowers you collect must be placed out on your turn either on your player board, where they'll score 1-3 points depending on colour, or on Gloomie cards you collected in the first phase. There are potentially rather more points to be earned from flowers placed on Gloomie cards but there's a risk because if you don't complete a card it scores nothing at all.
That's pretty much the game in a nutshell. It's a game that works at all player counts, and the number of players doesn't really alter the game's 45 minutes or so playing time because the board and number of flowers is the same regardless of player count. The game itself tho' has a different feel as a two-player game because with two players you get to take twice as many actions as in a four-player game. There are potential point scoring advantages in focusing on one or two colours of flower but the risk you have to balance is the increased prospect of not being able to take an action on your turn. The hybrid cards may seem 'expensive', in that you only get to draft one rather than two cards, but they provide increased flexibility that can prove decisive when it comes to harvesting flowers and allocating them to Gloomie cards....
Gloomies is designed by Filippo Landini, with art from Justin Chan.
