The Bionieuws editorial team concludes: every turn is an enjoyable puzzle, but Botanicus yields little botanical knowledge.
Botanicus is well designed and great fun to play. Biologically accurate it is not, however.
‘I move my gardener two spaces, then I place my flower here so I can walk three spaces along the hoeing track, and then I get to place two plants here.’ That is roughly what it sounds like when the Bionieuws editorial team plays Botanicus. At least, during a simple turn. This beautifully designed, strategic game contains an impressive number of elements. Getting to grips with the rules takes a little while as a result, but ultimately the game is not all that difficult. It is pleasantly challenging, though: every turn is a puzzle as to which actions will pay off best and how that will affect the next turn. The aim of the game is to score as many points as possible by laying out your own attractive botanical garden. Satisfying the various requirements of garden visitors – for example: three flowering plants and two seedlings in a row – generally yields the most points.
Flower position
During the game, players focus primarily on their own puzzle of how to accumulate points, but the actions of others determine which options are available. In this way, there is interaction at the same time. This is mainly because the position of each player’s flower on the main board determines who goes first in the next round, and who follows. It is an enjoyable game element that is not particularly common. Each flower position also comes with specific actions, which only one player can claim for free. Other actions will usually advance your botanical garden too, but with a little bad luck you may find yourself unable to water the right plants, leaving your visitors dissatisfied. With all that puzzling, the indicated playing time – 45 to 60 minutes – can easily be exceeded.
Garden managers
Botanicus has been available in Dutch since April this year. A new title might have been more fitting for the translation, because the game has little to do with botany. Players act as garden managers, not plant scientists. Playing Botanicus therefore imparts little botanical knowledge. Plants have different growth stages and they need water; that is roughly where it ends. Only in the exceptional case of a draw do players with a botanical background have an advantage. The winner is then whoever can first recite four scientific plant names.
On the back page of the rulebook, ‘botanically interested’ players can still find something for themselves in the form of an information page about the species depicted on the plant cards. Whilst it is a nice touch that the plants shown are not simply made up, it is a shame that the information has been written up carelessly. Setting aside the spelling mistakes and odd translations, a genuine plant scientist would not capitalise specific epithets, and would certainly not confuse a specific epithet with a family name.
In the game itself, too, a biologist will occasionally raise an eyebrow. In the expert variant of Botanicus, for instance, players must always remove animals from their garden before they yield any points – whereas in the base game, introducing each animal is immediately worth points. All in all, Botanicus is not necessarily suited to plant lovers. It is, however, suited to game lovers.
BOTANICUS – Samuele Tabellini Ferrari and Vieri Masseini / 999 Games
29.5 x 29.5 x 6.8 centimetres, €55