Kodama: The Tree Spirits

Kodama: The Tree SpiritsKodama: The Tree Spirits is a light, accessible filler card game for all the family, with some seriously cute artwork. In Kodama: The Tree Spirits, two to five players must grow their tree over three seasons by placing overlapping branch cards down on the table. Strategy and planning is necessary to allow room for future growth, while at the same time chaining together sets of the various branch features. Will you collect flowers, insects, mushrooms,

Kodama: The Tree Spirits is a light, accessible filler card game for all the family, with some seriously cute artwork.

In Kodama: The Tree Spirits, two to five players must grow their tree over three seasons by placing overlapping branch cards down on the table. Strategy and planning is necessary to allow room for future growth, while at the same time chaining together sets of the various branch features. Will you collect flowers, insects, mushrooms, or some of them all?

Kodama features the use of both variable public condition that will affect your choices and also variable private objectives. This means that Kodama has a good deal of strategy and tactics for a small box family game. You will need to think carefully before placing a card to ensure maximum opportunity to gain points.

The game is played over three seasons. At the start of each new season is the Decree phase. The guardians of the forest set a unique condition for the players to follow during that season. These decree card conditions are usually in the form of optional actions you can take to gain bonus points. Your choice then is do you go for the bonus points, stick to set collection, or attempts to achieve your personal Kodama objective. It may be hard to achieve all three. The addition of these decree cards will mean you strategy and approach to the game will change from season to season keeping the game fresh and interesting.

Players build up their tree and chain together sets all the while considering both their private objectives and the decree condition for that season.

After you have placed four branches during the season you can declare which of your four Kodama objective cards you want to score. But choose wisely, you won't be able to score the same cards next season. Forward thinking is also key to doing well in this game.

The designer, Daniel Solis, has packed a lot of game into this little box. It's a great game to take with you to see friends as it's easy to teach and learn and has plenty of replay-ability due to all the objectives.

Player Count: 2-5
Time: 30 Minutes
Age: 14+