Influenced by the Culture of the Tang Dynasty, the East Asian countries have a certain plot for "gardens".
China's "small bridges and flowing water people's homes" style jiangnan gardens and Japanese Italian-style dry landscapes are very representative. In contrast, although the Korean classical garden retains the heaviest traces of Tang style, we know the least about it.
In 2020, Korean board game designers brought a garden-building theme board game "Four Gardens", showing the world the beauty of oriental gardens with unique flavors.
The "Four Gods Garden" does not clarify the specific era of the story, only that in ancient times, there was a queen in a country in the East, who led her people to build a pagoda to worship the gods, and the queen of the Year of the Wind candle was about to abdicate, and the gods in the pagoda were also secretly looking for a new king worthy of being embraced.
However, it can be seen from the cover that not only is the "queen's" dressed in a Tang style to follow, but the high tower also shows the classic Chinese architectural structure "flying cornice bucket arch", and there are mountains and rivers around the tower, which is very homeopathic, "one pool and three mountains" Tang-style garden flavor.
The art of "Four Gods Garden" is also very appropriate to use the gorgeous watercolor painting style, but the most eye-catching is the 3D three-dimensional rotatable panoramic landscape pagoda model in the game.
The entire game will revolve around this pagoda, as well as pleasing building/wind cards, allowing players to experience the art and fun of garden building first-hand.
There is only one card available to the player, but this one is very cleverly designed. Each card is divided into two sides, the front is the construction side, facing the player himself, the above shows the mission icon for the player and different function icons, and on the back is the wind surface, drawing a beautiful scenery, and the score logo of different colors is available.
Each turn, the player selects three of the actions to perform by playing or discarding their hands, in four optional actions: building a garden, spinning a pagoda, collecting resources, and allocating resources, which can be repeated.
The three-dimensional pagoda is not a decoration, each floor offers different resources, and the player each faces one side of the tower.
When the player has a card with a tower icon in the upper right corner, they can discard the card, rotate the tower 90° clockwise or counterclockwise, and then collect resources as directed.
Rotating the tower in a planned way gives you the opportunity to collect a lot of resources at once. There are four types of stones, water, plants, and wood in the game, and different missions require different types of resources.
When the player completes three actions and fills his hand with five cards, the player ends his or her turn. When the players will have completed a sufficient number of wind objects, the final score will be performed at the end of the round, and the player with the highest score wins.
"Four Gods Garden" is a typical easy-to-use, light-rules, but highly strategic board game work. Players are concise and concise - lay out mission cards, then get and level resources as required to score, with only four basic resources and no resource replacement required, making it easy for beginners to get started.
Once you're familiar with the rules, you can quickly understand that scoring effectively isn't easy.
First of all, the multi-purpose mechanism of one card requires the player to reasonably plan the use and linkage of several hands every turn.
For example, which one is used as a task, and which one is used to collect and allocate resources to complete this task quickly? Put the task card first and then make up the resources, or collect enough resources to choose the task first, etc., you need to think carefully about the planning.
In addition to the operation of the round, it is also necessary to check whether the open cards in the public area can meet their planning needs and prepare for the next round, so that when the round is finished, you can determine whether to take the card or draw the luck.
Second, the scores in the game are not simply added up, but more important to collect sets and interaction between players.
Each card's surface is part of the panorama, and when the player completes a mission and turns multiple cards over to form a complete panorama, they will be able to earn extra points and receive a reward tile.
The rewards section can either get points directly, or you can choose to get the upgrade of the warehouse space or collect resources. That is to say, players can not only score more points again while piecing together a panorama score, but also choose to improve the efficiency of later development. These all prompt players to purposefully complete specific mission combinations.
Third, while the player gains different colors of consciousness to score points, they will also advance their own faith tokens on the corresponding color gods. In order to become the most favored person of the gods, the competition on the gods' tracks is also very fierce.
When the player advances the faith token to the end of a certain color god track, then getting the color's score again can make the other player's faith token back one block, and once a player's faith token is pushed to the starting point, then the game can no longer get the color score.
This setting of deducting points for opponents not only affects the development plan of players, but also makes the interaction between players more close, forming a tense situation of chasing after each other and not giving in to each other.
With its excellent appearance, the creativity of multi-purpose and rotating towers, simple and easy to use and strategic depth, "Four Gods Garden" has gone out of Korea and won a large number of board game players around the world.
Chinese version of "Four Gods Garden" has now landed on the "New Thing Collection" warm-up! If you like its style and creative oriental garden construction theme, then don't miss this "treasure" game with pagodas ~ go and make an appointment