Garden Geckos Board Game Review – Coming to Kickstarter Soon!
22.03.2024 - 14:27
/ gamesreviews.com
I toyed around with the idea of whether or not Garden Geckos, a game that is yet to be available to the masses, should get a review or a preview. The game was sent over by a fellow Ontarian who created and is publishing the title, and this review is for their upcoming Kickstarter campaign which is set to launch soon! This one from Tin Robot Games is shaping up to be a phenomenal light weight addition to your library. While I wonder how much traction it will get in the hardcore board game space, I cannot think of many better games to introduce to board game novices. Let’s take a look!
How to Play
In Garden Geckos, players are playing tiles from their hand of three onto the table to create at least one patter along an edge. Then they place, or move if all their geckos have been placed, a gecko straddling the two tiles on any one side that matches. Each tile has a number of different patterns printed on them, and a single bug in the middle. For the most part, players are attempting to place geckos in order to fulfill face up goal cards on the table. You might need a certain number of your geckos straddling specific patterns on the table, or you need to have geckos connecting various different bugs in a very specific order. Once you’ve completed an objective by laying a tile and placing a gecko that adds to the requirement, you get to take the cards.
Ultimately, every physical bug token you have at the end of the game, and every bug icon printed on a card, are worth one point each. Whoever has the most points wins!
Components
Last year we had the privilege of reviewing another Tin Robots Games titles called Cities of Venus, and in that review I remarked about how impressive I was with the quality of the game – and that was just a prototype with a few noted issues. Once again, this team has knocked it out of the park. The pattern tiles you lay out on the table are made of nice and thick cardboard that was easy to punch out. The cards as well are really great, and even though you don’t really handle them often, the quality level speaks to what Tin Robot Games is trying to do with their releases. I honestly think they could have gotten away with a lesser quality card material, but they opted to not do that.
More impressively, all the tokens in the game – whether the geckos you are placing or the bugs you can collect – are screen printed wooden pieces. Once again, had this been cardboard chits instead of wood pieces, I’m not sure anyone would have complained. It again speaks to what this company is looking to do with their game releases – high quality and consistence seems to be a benchmark of what they are doing. As an accessibility feature, each gecko has a different design printed on them that helps