1-6 Players
Designer: Max Anderson, Zac Dixon, Austin Harrison, Toby Sarnelle
Artist: Kelly Nakamura
Publisher: IV Studio
IV Studios comes to us with a “Roll and Write” which gets pretty much everything traditional about the style and goes a different route: the box is huge, there are dice but you never roll them, and there are even scratch-off cards. But do those all crazy ideas form a beautiful garden or is it just a pile of mulch?
How To Play
Don’t be fooled by the huge box, the game is quite straight-forward in terms of rules. You will play for 12 rounds, each round will start with basically some upkeep, like replacing friend bonus cards, refreshing the action row and ticking up your crops and animals.
But the main focus on the game is in the action phase, where from the 5 available action cards, each player chooses two and executes them in any order. There are four main actions in the game. Tending allows a player to till soil and also plant and water crops in your garden. Fishing allows you to roll dice and fish in the coordinates rolled in any available fish spot. Cutting and mining takes you to the scratch-off card and just scratching an available spot, which will give you resources, but sometimes also additional actions and level ups.
In Tend, any resource gained must be immediately spent, either on various upgrades and awards, sold to the commissary, or stored in your bins with cute and super handy stamps included in the game. Items in storage, awards gained and three end of game scoring opportunities will give you points.
Rules and Components
Starting easy, rules are really clear, well laid out and structured with plenty of illustrations to make sure that all areas of gameplay are clear. The only downside is that the rules present all components in details before explaining what they do, so starting off can feel a bit daunting, but once rules start going it’s easy to parse what everything is and how it works.
Components are, well, excessive, in a good way. I mentioned the huge box, and its goal is to house every component comfortably. It’s not that there are too many components, but the game does include an obscene amount of pads and scratch-offs so you can play and play and play. There is SOME overkill, like the stamps in the pens, but absolutely nothing feels extra or unnecessary, and everything comes together to create a beautiful play experience.
Also, the components feel super premium. The pens are nice, the dice are nice, the pads are nice, the cards are of amazing quality. Every upgrade feels like a quality of life upgrade, they have a purpose and do make the overall feel better.
Score: 9.5/10
Tend is the type of game I greatly appreciate in terms of how they handle the rules. The rules themselves are actually simple, nothing too fancy or out of place. From the first gameplay and every single experience since, I felt like every single turns goes like a breeze, everything just clicks in place, the actions feel fluid and you can see the many lines of play the four actions will allow you.
Gameplay
But, let’s be clear: this is a thinky game. There is a lot to keep your eyes on, lots to plan and everything feels interconnected in an interesting way. The game heavyness lies completely on how you handle your opportunities, how to get the most out of them, and just keep track of everything you want to do. The path for each of the 3 scoring goals is multi-stepped and requires you to hinge your opportunities and have a clear plan ahead.
Score: 10
Theme and Art
IV Studios chose a very video-gamey feel to Tend. The icons are simple, there is plenty of pixelated icons and fonts, and everything is super bright, but somewhat minimalistic. Each individual component seems to be created to maximize usability and simplicity. That being said, everything comes together in an incredibly cohesive package that just looks good and thought out.
This also ties in really well with the theme and feel the game puts out. It’s a light theme, a futuristic farming simulator. That’s pretty much it. But it’s not about depth, it’s about how it makes you feel. It’s a friendly game, with friendly challenges and friendly looks. It’s, overall, a feel good package. For me, it did make me feel good playing, even when my brain was going into overdrive.
Score: 9/10
Conclusion
I was not sure of what to expect from Tend, and I purposefully went in blind. It’s a game of contradictions: it’s a game that is both excessive and minimalistic, easygoing and brain burning, easy to play but hard to play well.
But very rarely a game is so consistent in making me smile. Even in all contradictions, every aspect of Tend clicks and ticks like every single element in this game is on the right place, in the right amount, and it’s all up to the player to make the most out of it.
Every aspect of the game is super friendly, from the visuals, themes, mechanisms, components. It’s a heavy game in terms of tactics and strategies, but it feels way lighter. It will make you work and sweat your neurons to do well, but it never feels oppressive or unachievable. It’s a 60-90 minutes game that feels like a 15-30 minute game. And every single game so far I looked at the completed session and I wanted to just go one more time, try something else, something different, discover more.
Score: 9.5/10
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