Crow Jam 6: Green Finger Grove

Crow Jam is our monthly game jam podcast, which you can listen to here. Below is an overview of Green Finger Grove, our wild witchy resource exploitation game.

THE ELEVATOR PITCH

Green Finger Grove is a 2 – 4 player medium strategy game with elements of engine-building, push-your-luck and resource exploitation. Players are witches dwelling in the wild woods, where they must discover and cultivate dangerous plants to harvest ingredients that will grow their power and eventually allow them to complete their potion recipes.

THE LOOK

Heavily inspired by Scooby-Doo and by depictions of frightening flora: background elements are in a hand-painted, watercolour style with an atmospheric, ‘spooky’ feel. Plant depictions are more ‘cartoony’, with lots of character. Player pieces are detailed 3D miniatures of unique witches.

The components include:

• 25 wilderness tiles, each showing one of 5 different ‘scary’ plants.
• 4 player meeples.
• 4 draw bags.
• Ingredient tokens for 5 ingredients (e.g. lily seedpod, cactus sap, poison berry)
• Harvest tokens in 4 colours: green, black, purple, white
• Potion book cards.
• Deck of power cards.

Play takes place on a 5×5 grid of wilderness tiles, with each player starting from the centre of one edge, their witch’s “cottage”.

THE AIM

The aim of the game is to be the first witch to collect all the ingredients needed to complete the recipes in their potion book. Each potion book has a unique selection of three potion recipes. Every recipe requires some combination of the five ingredients available from the five different kinds of plant.

TURNS

Turns consist of movement, harvesting, and brewing.

Movement – all witches start with the same base movement (e.g. 2 spaces) and may use this however they wish on their turn, including breaking up their movement to harvest multiple times from different plants.

Harvesting – harvesting uses the draw bag in a continuous manner, so each turn a witch may continue drawing harvest tokens, without returning any to the bag, until she chooses or is made to stop. Each witch starts with a base set of tokens (e.g. four green and one black). Harvest tokens work as follows:

• Green tokens: each green token drawn represents a single unit of ingredient that the witch may harvest (from the plant on the space she occupies when the green token is drawn).
• Black tokens: a black token means the witch must immediately stop harvesting and cannot draw more tokens this turn.
• White tokens do not have an effect, but may be added to your bag as a way of ‘soothing’ plants. When a black or purple token would be added to your draw bag, you may instead remove a white token.
• Purple tokens: a purple token causes the witch to lose every ingredient she has harvested so far this turn. She may still continue harvesting after drawing a purple token.

Brewing – when harvesting is completed a witch may spend any ingredients in her supply to either complete potion recipes, or gain power cards. There are 5 different ‘flavours’ of power card available, each with a different kind of ability and which require a different ingredient type to purchase. The costs and exact details of power cards vary.

• Movement power cards may be activated once per turn to give a witch additional movement.
• Yield power cards may be activated once per turn to increase the amount of ingredient harvested from one plant.
• Cultivation power cards are spent immediately to add either green or white tokens to your own draw bag.
• Competition power cards are spent immediately to add either black or purple tokens to your opponents’ draw bags.
• Contingency power cards can be spent at any time to manipulate the outcomes of drawing (e.g. draw 3 and choose; return last drawn token and draw again).

SUMMARY

Players compete to optimise their own cultivation strategy, and push their luck to get the most out of their own patch of wilderness. They will choose between prioritising movement and cultivation or competition and contingency, and whether to brew powers or potions. The game ends when one player completes every recipe in their potion book.

WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THIS GAME?

With a combination of engine building and push-your-luck, and providing a wide variety of strategy options, Green Finger Grove is a resource exploitation game with plenty of risk, showing how investing in caring for your surroundings can be the best route to success.