Petals to the Metal: A Review of Flowerfall

One of the sleeper hits of Origins was a game that didn’t even exist just a few shorts weeks before the event. Carl Chudyk is the man behind the very good game Glory To Rome, and the good-but-ridiculous-ending game Innovation. And just before Origins he had an idea for a game about dropping cards with flowers on them onto a table. So they printed up 100 copies on simple card stock, and one of my friends was able to score one.

There are five different colors of cards, and each person gets an identical set of cards with their color of flowers on them. Some cards have only one flower on them, while others have five or six.

The object of the game is to create “gardens” by dropping your cards onto the table, and having the majority of your flowers at the end of the game. Of course, the other players are trying to do the same thing.

You drop the cards from shoulder height onto the table, so it’s pretty hard to drop them with any amount of skill. Every game feels like a little bit of skill mixed with a whole lot of luck.

Despite that, the game is pretty unique and fun. It’s a good filler for the beginning or end of a night—or when you’re waiting for other people to wrap up a game. And it’s really portable. And it’s about flowers, so the likelihood of my wife playing this over…say…a game about the Lord of the Rings is huge.

If you weren’t fortunate to be one of the 100 people who scored a copy of the 1^st printing, there’s good news: There’s a Kickstarter campaign for a proper edition. You can find it here, but be aware it ends Friday at midnight. It’s overfunded, so it will be produced, and you can get a copy for a mere $15.