Review: Takenoko

No one had ever told me I am a great gardener, but they have told me I eat a lot which is probably why I am so good at this game. The panda is a very relatable character.

In Takenoko you find yourself at the disposal of a king asking you to make him a beautiful zen garden, but the indecisive man he is has hired you and up to 3 other people for the same job. You have a single gardener between all of you, and have to keep his panda fed in the process. You are then scored on how well you complete “Panda Objectives”, “Garden Objects” and “Land Objectives.”

Once someone completes a certain amount of objects the final round is triggered, whoever has the most points at the end of that round wins. Simples.

Every turn you can take 2 different actions, one of the single most frustrating choices you have to make. Because everyone knows all good ideas stem from at least 3 actions. You can either find a plot of land: picking up 3 hexagons from a huge stack and adding one of them to the board. You can take some water to irrigate a plot of land that isn’t directly adjacent to the centre fountain keeping everything alive and well. You can move the gardener to grow on a plot of irrigated land, and any adjacent plots that are of the same colour and irrigated as well. You can move the panda to eat the gardeners hard work. Or you can pick up a new objective card.

Now considering your hand starts filled with things you need to eat, stuff you need to grow and pretty land patterns you want to make and irrigate 2 moves is not enough. 2 moves is never enough. Which is where the amazing “weather dice comes in”. Every turn after the first one you roll this dice to give you an additional effect, ranging from taking 2 identical actions, to lightning that scares the panda into eating something off of the board, or the sun that lets you take 3 ACTIONS. The sun is the best side of the dice. Period. Except the question mark which lets you choose the sun side.

The first few rounds starts slow as you all begin to build the zen garden together, filled with joy and outbursts of rage as someone places something that innocently destroys the pattern you had been trying to make with your plots. Before long the gardener is being flung across the garden, paid ludicrously small amounts for working tirelessly to make bamboo shoots everywhere. All the while as you are desperately trying to grow 3 high pink bamboo some other idiot is telling the panda that Pink Bamboo is the only thing he needs to eat. Everyone’s objectives suddenly feel mutually exclusive, but definitely aren’t.

The fun of this game is seeing half of your quickly made plans blossom into points, and the other half crumble between this turn and the next. But with every other players turn between new plans are made within seconds, you don’t feel bad about the options left open to you because they’re still not “thaaaaat bad”.

Why do we like it?

This might easy for me to say as the current undefeated king of Takenoko in multiple households, but it is a lighthearted game that doesn’t take itself super seriously. It is easy enough to get into and easier yet to play. This game does a lot of things well, it has a great family friendly vibe, and it is simple. With the variety of choices at your disposal you rarely feel paralysed by choice and a small amount of depth to those choices.

Would I recommend it? That depends. If you have a handful of games, this one will fit right in - yeah absolutely get it! But if your collection has grown past more than a handful of games and you’re struggling to make it fit into an Ikea bag maybe consider this one a bit more. It is a fantastic game, but more by being a jack of many trades than a master of any in particular.

It is not the most light hearted game we own, Bannangrams takes the crown there. It is also not the most adorable, I think Everdell suits me much better for that. It also does not have the depth of strategy as Everdell (I really like Everdell). If I am trying to entertain my sister and my Dad I would put this as a serious contender, but perhaps not the winner.

Takenoko in our collection would always make it close to the podium, but I doubt it would ever stand on it. But we have learnt our tastes and what we love in our 80+ games – that was in no small part helped by owning this. Definitely try it, maybe buy it.

TLDR: Takenoko is a fun, cute family game. But if you have more than 10 games this might not be the most fun, cutest, family-est game ever.