Photosynthesis Review – Pretty Trees and the Scripted Struggle for Sunlight

Nature-themed board games continue to gain popularity, but one of the first board games to bring this theme to life was Photosynthesis. A game that lets you experience the wooden and leafy life of a tree species within a forest. Your survival requires you to seek out the sun, plant your seeds, and grow your tree empire.

One of the more peculiar aspects of Photosynthesis is the cardboard sun attaching itself to your game board. Each round it moves to a different position, letting you know which direction the sun is shining.

After it’s moved, your trees extend their branches in that direction to gather sun points. One point for a small tree, two for a medium, and three for a large. However, where there is light there must be shadow. Each tree blocks the trees behind it, preventing them from gaining sun points. Small trees block one space behind them, two spaces for medium trees, and three for large trees. The exception to this rule is that larger trees still gather sun when blocked by smaller trees.

After you’ve counted up all your sun points, it’s time to grab your shopping cart and go on a sun point spending spree. Here you can buy seeds and trees from your player board to put into your reserve, or put seeds and trees from your reserve into the forest. Ultimately, you’re trying to grow large trees and then use the collect action to chop them down for victory points.

Once everyone’s had a chance to buy, you move the sun segment to its next position and do it all again. After the sun completes three rotations of the board, it’s all over. Whoever has the most victory points wins the game.

The wonders of plant life

When it comes to form factor, Photosynthesis is one of the best. All the trees you place are cardboard standees. So by the time mid-game rolls around, you actually have a little forest at the centre of your table. But it’s not just there for looks, it’s also a great representation of the mechanics at work.

All of the rules in the game regarding trees, including how much each tree costs, how much shade is cast, and how far away from the tree you can plant a seed are the same. You simply need to remember small trees are one, medium trees are two, and large trees are three. Because these rules apply to everything, one look at the board and you easily understand your position in the game.

There’s an elegance within these rules that you don’t see too often within games. However, one game you do see this in is Blue Lagoon, another Blue Orange Games production. Coincidence?

At the top of the review, I mentioned Photosynthesis simulates the life of trees, and that part of the game is delightful. Providing a unique challenge of finding different spots in the forest to gain as much sun as possible, while also growing your trees efficiently. Since the sun dynamically rotates around the board, it feels like you’re watching a timelapse video of your forest coming to life.

Moving away from the simulation aspect, as a player, you’re striving to strike a balance between your sun point economy, and growing trees for points. However, there are a couple of trade-offs you need to consider.

First, the economy in Photosynthesis is tight, like twenty-five people all trying to fit into the same elevator tight. Each tree you plant, or grow, only gives you one extra sun point. So you have to spend a lot to receive a little. A cost that grows the more trees you already have in the forest.

You also need to consider where you want your trees. The closer they are to the middle of the forest, the more victory points they’ll reward you with upon collection. However, they’re also more likely to be sun-blocked by other trees.

Weighing up these considerations leads to some interesting choices with long-term consequences. Since you can only use a particular tree once per turn, growing a tree to the point of collection takes a minimum of four turns. As a result, you need to be thinking well ahead if you want to win a game of Photosynthesis.

You’re not thinking in the 4th dimension, Marty!

Going into Photosynthesis, I read that it’s a mean game because there’s a lot of blocking. Having played it, I don’t agree. When planting a tree to shade someone, you can only block them from one direction. Every other turn of that revolution, their tree gathers sun as expected.

In Arboretum, another game about trees, you can wipe out all of your opponent’s points by hanging on to one card. By comparison, Photosynthesis feels almost friendly.

Going back to being able to block trees from only one angle, raises the question: do your decisions even matter? Not as much as the tight economy suggests. In my plays, the winner only won by a couple of sun points despite any experience gaps between players. This isn’t a surprise because of how expensive it is to gain victory points.

Because of this, unless you’re trying to lose, it’s very hard to fall behind. As long as you keep planting and growing trees, making sure they’re in sunlight, you’ll reach the same point as everyone else. Where it becomes a race within the final revolution to collect as many large trees as possible.

After my fourth play of Photosynthesis and seeing the same pattern of play every time, my opinion of the game soured. With its constricted economy, the game feels very Chess-like to play, where every move is so costly it matters. However, no matter how one played, they were always in it until the last move.

This felt at ends with itself, where the game wanted to be both a family game and an extremely competitive one. I leant into the competitive feeling and came up disappointed, as there weren’t many avenues to express my skill. At least in the two-player game.

At higher player counts this same pattern of play formed but the forest was a lot more chaotic. With shadows everywhere you look, it was hard to find good spots for trees. Resulting in an even more confined economy, but a similar outcome to the game.

Photosynthesis is a beautiful game to look at and provides a unique and wonderful experience of creating a forest on your dining room table. While your first couple of games can be a lot of fun, the more I analysed it, the more I felt that my decisions didn’t matter as much as I wanted them to. Something that became clearer every time I played.