Blue Orange Games was kind enough to send me the expansion to Photosynthesis for review and, while not impossible, I’d feel the need to talk a little bit about the initial set it adds to. To begin, if you know me, you’ll know I love games with weird a seemingly boring themes. At it’s core the game is about growing trees and catching sunlight. The board is basically an island in which the sun moves around clockwise. On this island so full of hexagonal squares, players will take turns spending light points from the sun to plant seeds, grow trees, and eventually destroy them for end game points.

It sounds pretty simple, yeah? The challenge in Photosynthesis, especially with the maximum of four players, is space. The trees can grow three sizes after a seed is planted. Small, Medium, and Large trees will litter the island casting shadows over any hopeful sapling and dashing their chances to catch some solar rays.

And now I’ll offer some examples as to exactly how that works. A large tree will block the sun from any tree in a hex square three spaces from it following along the path of the light rays. A medium tree will block any medium or smaller tree similarly, but only two spaces away. Lastly, a small tree only blocks small trees a single space away. Seeds do not collect light points.

Eventually this strategic game will evolve into players sacrificing necessary light points, the currency spent on actions, to achieve victory points.

If you’re not thinking ahead, you might get left behind. With a game reliant on so strategically placing these trees and a clear view of where the sun is headed it’s best tio choose each move VERY carefully.

With the original Photosynthesis game being so succinct and great on it’s own, I never imagined the possibility that it could be expanded. With that in mind, I’d like to personally thank Blue Orange Games for proving me wrong.

With this expansion there is plenty of new gameplay. First thing to start mentioning is that now not only do you have to compete for sun points, but lunar points exist as well. These do not offer actions for your trees, but instead animal allies each with their own abilities.

With eight animals in all(The Boar, The Hedgehog, The Squirrel, The Fox, The Owl, The Badger, The Beaver, and The Turtle) and each having unique abilities the game changes dramatically. At the game start, you’ll be given two random animals of which you’ll pick one to give you the edge throughout the game. During my playthrough, I chose The Hedgehog whose unique abilities are to spend lunar points to move and extra space on the board and an ability that allows you to spend lunar points, rather than lights points, to plant a seed. Additional animals have powers that eating opponents’ seeds, negating costs of collecting trees for victory points, moving seeds, and many more. The Turtle has a ton of actions based on whatever hatched from one of it’s nests.

That’s not all! There are other modes of play offered in this expansion as well. The Great Elder Tree Mode offers you to strategically maneuver around the massive elder tree which blocks both sunlight and moonlight. Another mode uses Moonstones placed around the board to offer extra moonlight to the animals around them.

I can’t say enough how much I love this game, even if it can sometimes be frusterating. It has a weird concept and long term strategy that will keep you on your toes as you attempt to score enough victory points to defeat other players. This game got plenty of play before the expansion, I imagine it’ll get plenty of play after

-Ryan Miller