Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Gameplay - 9/10 Theme - 10/10 Artwork - 10/10 Components - 10/10 Overall - 10/10 Don't be fooled by the beautiful artwork, or the adorable little illustrated animals hidden within the components, Photosynthesis is a vicious abstract strategy game, and it's probably the best use of thematic gameplay for any tabletop game in 2017, worthy of being equated with other top tier uses of theme in designing gameplay, such as Shadows Over Camelot, Blood Rage, and just about anything produced by Fantasy Flights. The theme revolves around growing trees. Not the sexiest idea for a board game theme, I know, but Photosynthesis compensates with its deceptively deep gameplay. You begin with two trees. Your trees absorb sunlight, which translates into "light points," your in-game currency. You use your "light points" to disperse your seeds, plant more trees, and grow your existing trees, attempting to make your way to the center of the board, where the most fertile soil is located, which is where you'll accumulate the most victory points. Already I'm sure you can imagine involves a certain degree of area control and resource management, but the true depth in Photosynthesis' strategy comes from its timing and time management, which you have to plan every single one of your moves around. There's a "sun" rotating around the board. As the sun rotates, and strikes your trees from different angles, your trees cast shadows in different directions, which will cause the light source to be cut off from trees positioned in certain directions, including your own. Bigger trees cast bigger shadows, while they're also capable of absorbing light in the midst of the smaller trees around them, forcing you to constantly take into account where the sun is going to be positioned, and how you can best position yourself to absorb the most amount of light as possible, and, more importantly, how to cut off the light source of your opponents, which makes time management critical, and facilitates weaponizing the most cut throat strategies at your disposal. There is no "nice" way to play Photosynthesis, and still be successful. That all goes without mentioning just how wonderful the artwork and components in this game are. The trees at you and your opponent's disposal are not merely color swapped copies of one another, but each different color of tree comes with a completely different design, which is not only helpful for immediately differentiating between your trees and your opponent's trees, but it also just makes the game look that much more visually appealing when it's all laid out on the table, as you can see in the picture. I'm still deciding whether this is going to crack my top 25 board games of all time, since I've only played it four times so far, and I'll need to play it more to decide for certain, but as of right now, I'm betting it will, and it's easily my favorite new game from what I've played in 2017 so far.