Mycelia Review – A Gorgeous Scientific Triumph That Simply Forgets to End

Disclaimer: Mycelia was provided for free by VR Distribution, although the writing and opinions of this article are my own.

Mushrooms sautéed in butter make just about anything better, as it turns out, they’re a solid side dish for board games too. In Mycelia, you’ll guide a network of fungi as it spreads across the forest floor, growing mushrooms, and snatching spores on the path to victory.

It’s gorgeous. It’s weird. And yes, it’s very mushroom-forward.

How to Play

Playing Mycelia means embracing your inner fungus. Over the course of the game, you’ll cultivate wild mushrooms for victory points, spread their spores across the board, and eventually decay them for powerful abilities.

During setup, you’ll create the game board, by forming a star of colourful triangular tiles. These represent the different nutrients you’ll need to grow your mushrooms.

You’ll also place your mother mushroom token on one of these tiles. This token is both powerful and highly mobile. It’s the only piece you can move freely.

On your turn, you’ll choose two of the following six actions:

• Move – Move your mother mushroom one or two spaces.
• Fruit – Spend spores you control to grow mushrooms in your player area.
• Spore – Roll the wind die and spread spores in the indicated direction.
• Decay – Slide a fruited, spored mushroom card beneath its board, unlocking new abilities for the rest of the game.
• Explore – Add a new triangular tile to the map.
• Discover – Draw a mushroom card from the market.

As you spread spores, you’ll form a mycelial network connecting your mushrooms. While it won’t let you warp through space like in Star Trek: Discovery, it will help you grow more mushrooms later in the game.

However, be careful as other players can steal your spores and break your network apart by growing mushrooms in your network or strategically moving their mother mushroom.

In addition to spores and mushroom tokens, the board also features a scattering of insect tiles. You can collect these by moving your mother mushroom over them, and they grant various benefits. Such as repositioning an opponent’s mother mushroom, refreshing the market, or even scoring points (two insect tiles are worth one point at the end of the game).

Players continue battling for spores, growing mushrooms, and decaying them for bonuses until one player decays a mushroom on each of their player boards. When that happens, the game immediately ends, and that player earns an extra 5 points.

Finally, players tally up their points from mushroom cards and insect tokens to determine whose fungi reign supreme!

Mushroom-span

I’ll be the first to admit that comparing every game to Wingspan has gotten out of hand. But given its cultural impact, it’s an easy reference point. That said, Mycelia has earned the comparison. It’s a game fully deserving of a mushroom-span moniker.

From the graphic design of the cards to the nature-inspired theme and gorgeous artwork, you can see the imprint Wingspan has left on Mycelia. Except instead of birds, it’s mushrooms.

A highlight of both games is the artwork. Much like Wingspan, Mycelia is visually stunning, packed with intricate details and showcasing an incredible variety of bizarre fungi. I found myself flipping through the cards after the game, genuinely fascinated. How do these things even exist?

But Mycelia isn’t just a pretty game, it’s also smart, injecting a welcome dose of science into your board game night. It brings to life the struggle of a mycelial network fighting for survival on the forest floor, competing with other fungal colonies for resources and reproduction.

It also introduces players to the hidden world beneath our feet, from the way wind shapes ecosystems to the surprising role of insects. It’s an excellent game for nature lovers. Or for anyone who wants to explore a world they’d never normally think about, especially if their day job involves staring at a screen in the middle of a concrete jungle.

The Never Ending Fungi

Out in Oregon’s Blue Mountains, you’ll find Armillaria ostoyae, the world’s largest fungus. Spanning 2,384 acres, this mycelial giant seems never-ending. In a strange way, it’s fitting that Mycelia feels like a game that never ends.

Okay, that’s not entirely true.

But there’s nothing actively driving players toward the endgame. There’s no real push to grow mushrooms on all your player boards. In fact, the opposite is true. Since some mushroom decay abilities only apply to specific boards, Mycelia actively encourages you to cycle through player boards and extend the game for more points.

In our first playthrough, we must have gone 90 minutes before we realised this, and only then did we take it upon ourselves to actually end the game. Without this conscious push, we could have gone on for hours.

That was also the first and last time we played with all five player boards. The rulebook defaults to five but suggests fewer for a shorter game. After that first session, we dropped to three boards, which made Mycelia far more engaging and quicker to play.

Outside of the drag factor, Mycelia struggles to create meaningful momentum. The area control system is interesting for resource generation and collection, but there are only one or two turns where it really matters. Usually when you swoop in with your mother mushroom to steal a cluster of spores.

The engine-building feels similarly underwhelming. Decaying mushrooms for abilities seems like a core mechanic, but it takes at least two turns to trigger, and the benefits rarely justify the effort.

Then there’s the issue of randomness. The wind die dictates where spores land, the mushroom market is unpredictable, and nutrient tile draws can make or break your turn.

Ultimately, outside of its stunning artwork and high production value, Mycelia is a collection of good mechanics that never quite stand out. The area control is interesting but a little shallow, the engine-building feels a bit too sluggish, and the wind die strips away too much strategic control.

All in all, Mycelia is a meandering game, buoyed by its unique theme and rich fungal biology. If you’re here for an immersive glimpse into the hidden world beneath the forest floor, there’s plenty to appreciate. However for strategy fans, there are better games on the market.