The Alwaysgreen Garden (2019)

Magical animal gardeners work with you in their enchanted garden as you create the best menu of unique forest dishes competing to become the new head chef of the Acorn Inn.

The Alwaysgreen Garden is a unique mix of worker placement, tableau and resource management, with a pinch of engine building for spice. The game features a dynamic play area that changes with each player interaction. Your goal is to harvest ingredients and work with the magical animal gardeners to make the most fantastic table of recipes!

Players all start the game with two recipe cards, two skill cards and a unique menu card. Additional recipes and skill cards can be acquired during play. However, your menu card stays with you throughout play, giving you a special end-of-game scoring multiplier if you achieve certain combinations. Up to three recipe cards can be placed in your kitchen area while you collect ingredients. Once you've gathered the necessary ingredients for a recipe, you can present it to a gardener (more about that below). Skill cards are played directly from your hand, giving you extra actions, bonus ingredients or can add to your points at the end of the game.

Four (or five) garden patch tiles make up the board. Each garden patch grows different ingredients, vegetables, fruit, fungus and grains/nuts. Each turn ingredients randomly grow in these garden patches dictated by a roll of the garden dice. Four (or five) magical gardener animals tend the garden, though each has one particular patch that they are partial to. These animal figures are placed on the board in their preferred garden patch to start the game. Players take turns moving their token to different garden patches, harvesting the ingredients and interacting with the gardeners. You can present your completed recipe to the gardener on your patch or call a different gardener to your patch to use their special ability. You can't do both.

As the gardener animals are called to different patches and different ingredients grow or are harvested, players have unique options every turn! You'll constantly be guessing where the gardeners will land and hoping there will be enough ingredients available to complete another recipe. Strategy, clever resource management and a bit of luck is needed to ensure you maximize each turn!

Recipe cards, toppings, combos and your unique menu card all contribute to your victory points! After one player finishes their sixth recipe, the other players have one last turn to create a final masterpiece. The player with the most points at the end of the game wins!

Concept by Ruthie Jones. Mechanisms and art by Darryl T. Jones.

—description from designer