3 Seeds: A Game Review

I recently reviewed Commissioned, a cooperative game published by Chara Games. The company has a brand-new game out now called 3 Seeds that we also got to try. The company describes it as a “light strategy” game. It is designed for 2-5 players and is for ages 12 and up.

When I opened the box, I could tell that this was a bit more than a typical card game. The small box contained 4 kinds of cards: Harvest, Crop, Event, and Seeds. It also included a wooden turn marker, scoring cubes, plastic point tokens, and  scorecards.

Game play is a bit more complicated than many card games, but, as with Commissioned, once we started playing, we picked up the rules pretty quickly. It took a second play of the game to start incorporating strategy into our choices.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The basic game play is as follows:

Each player has one Crop card face up in front of him at all times. He also has a Harvest card that assigns a point value to that card. Each crop card requires a specified number of Seed cards (Time, Money, and Labor) to for that crop to be completed. Each player, on his turn, plays 2 seed cards on his on crop or on another player’s crop. When a Crop is completed, points are assigned to each player, depending on how many seeds he has placed on that crop and the number of the corresponding Harvest card. Event cards add twists to the game, allowing players to add to their harvest points, swap crops with another player, and so on.

Game play took us about 45 minutes for 2-3 players. I thought the game was quite unique—we have quite a few games, but nothing like this one. The Crop cards are fun to read as you play. They feature unusual “crops” like “Hyper Jalepenos: Heat that keeps you on your toes,” “Blissful Bamboo: Recommended by 10 out of 10 pandas,” and “Cautious Kale: A hyper aversion to the unknown. Side effect: No friends.” We enjoyed playing the game and I am sure we will play it again, but it’s really not one of our favorites. Game play seemed repetitive from turn to turn and, although there is some strategy needed for accumulating the most points, it didn’t feel very challenging, nor did we feel the competition against other players that makes some games a lot of fun.