Gardens of Io (2016)

Overview

Our beloved Martians from Gardens of Mars have travelled to Jupiter’s moon Io. They’ve also improved their gardening techniques to avoid stepping on the flowers as they move around the garden. Now they toss rapid-growth seeds from the outside of the garden instead.

Help your little Martian gardener plant flowers to create the grandest, most beautiful garden on Io. The Martian with the greenest thumb wins! (Just the thumb: Martians are not green.)

Components:

- A board representing a garden on Io (81 circles) and a perimetral score track; both checkered for clarity. - 60 flowers in 6 different colours (10 each) - A carrying case. - 6 black Martians in 3 types (2 each) - 4 white Martians in 2 types (2 each) - 3 trees (black cones) - 5 black counters

Gameplay:

Players take turns in clockwise order planting flowers on the garden by tossing seeds diagonally or orthogonally from the perimetral scoring track. Then they move their martian a number of empty spaces forward on the score track equal to the number same-colour contiguous flowers that are connected to the one they've just planted forming a group, including that flower.

They can also perform one of the 5 special actions before planting a flower, but only once per game. They also get an already planted flower from the board back each time their martian crosses the finish line.

When one of the players runs out of flowers, the martian furthest along the scoring track wins the game (laps count!) .