Knock Knock.
Who's there?
Orange.
Orange Who?
Knock Knock.
Don't worry, I won't continue with the joke. The Grove is a quick and cute solitaire puzzler. Match up your citrus and make some lemonade. You won't be rolling the dice in this game, but that doesn't take anything away from stacking up the cards and racking up the points.
Spider: It was like country Sprawlopolis with the overlapping card mechanism. I really liked that and it's not a mechanic I see all the time.
Cat: Yeah, I got sucked into it. I started out scoring pretty low, but quickly became entranced and wanted to see how many cards I could get overlapping and stacked. I loved the points system. It was super fun and addictive.
Spider: I loved how quick and simple the game was. In fact, it was so quick, the creators had a good thought to set the base game up for two back-to-back rounds.
Cat: Having two back-to-back games premade was such a plus. Once I learned the base game, I don't think I ever just played one round. Once you add in the objective cards for the advanced version though it eliminates this possibility.
Spider: Grove had this balance that was deceptively brain burning, but also super relaxing. Pretty odd combination, but I loved it.
Cat: I couldn't get enough of it. I found myself wanting to play for hours. I felt the same way about solitaire when I was a kid. Just endless replay value.
Spider: I felt like Grove had just enough extra features to really make it interesting. The wheelbarrow and the squirrel made things fun. The points mechanism on the dice was cool with the basket. That allowed players to increase their scores if they could figure how to get more than 6 of a given fruit stacked.
Cat: I thought the squirrel was adorable. I liked how it was helpful, but also a pain, if you used it too early. I liked the wheelbarrow and always found myself trying to use it. I will admit sometimes I got tunnel vision with it and tanked my game.
Spider: The instructions were pretty good, although the font was pretty small. I guess that was necessary to fit everything in the tiny box.
Cat: Like learning any game, I'm always just a bit intimidated. I actually preferred with Grove having Spider learn the game first and then walk me through it. He made everything so simple.
Spider: I'm not really sure if there was anything I didn't like. Maybe, sometimes the luck of the draw aspect? But then again, that's also what it made it fun sometimes, so it felt balanced.
Cat: I'm a super-fan. I love it.
Pros:
quick
easy to learn
fun
endless replay value
Ratings (4 - love it, 1 -not going to play again):
Four Spiders
Four Cats
