Matthew BaileyGloomies was hands down one of the main games that stole the show for me. It’s from the same design team as Mycelia, and it shares the same gorgeous artwork by Justin Chan, who you might recognise from the Century Golem games.
The game tells the story of the Gloomies, little creatures from outer space who love to adorn themselves with beautiful galactic flowers. Your aim is to grow these flowers in the first half of the game and then harvest them in the second half.
You start with a hand of flowers, and on your turn, you can play up to three flower cards to start planting them on the board in order, from one side to the other. Once you’ve finished placing your flowers, you get the bonus of whatever token is on the left-hand side of the board. This could be things like a little helper (who gives you extra actions), a Gloomie order (that you can decorate with flowers), or Stardust (which gets you extra points). These tokens then flip over and move to the other side of the board, ready to be used later.
What you’re really trying to do in this phase is get a decent number of flowers spread fairly evenly so that in the second half, you’ve got options for harvesting and can aim for the more valuable combinations. Once you’ve planted six flowers in each column, reaching the line, you add up your scores for phase one, flip your board over, and prepare for the nighttime party.
In phase two, you’re essentially doing the opposite. You’re using the flower cards you harvested earlier to take those flowers, again in order, and place them either on your Gloomie orders or in other scoring combinations.
Visually, the game is beautiful. The characters have so much heart, the colours are rich and vibrant, and everything just pops. The wooden tokens are lovely and very reminiscent of Lacuna, with a really nice wooden tray to hold all your flowers.
Even though this is just a first impression and not a full review, I’m going to go out on a limb and say Gloomies is a really lovely game that absolutely deserves to be played. While I’ve seen some of the individual mechanics before, it’s different enough in how it all comes together that there’s nothing quite like it. I had a great time playing, and once my copy arrives, I’ll 100% do a full review. I’ve got a strong feeling this will earn pride of place as one of the first games we cover in this year’s Summer of ’64.
