- Sep 12, 2013
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Description:
Octopus' Garden is a tile-laying game for 2 to 4 players. Players chose which plant and animal tiles to purchase from a central market and then decide how best to arrange them in their own garden. Careful planning is required to attract seahorses and clownfish, to protect pearl-producing oysters from the sea stars, and to avoid startling delicate feather worms.
- Boardgamegeek.com
The 3x3 board in the center is the "market", and players can purchase any row or column on their turn (no diagonals). The cost of each tile is represented by the number of white pearls on the tile (see: Garden pic). After purchasing tiles you place them in your "Garden". Careful arrangement of tiles will maximize your "beauty points". The beauty points are the numbers written on each tile. At the end of your turn you harvest pearls. Each Oyster you have in your garden will give you one pearl. When a player fills all the spaces in their garden, the game will end, with each other player being allowed one more turn. The player with the most beauty points wins!
Tile Attributes: [cost in eggs, beauty points] (number of tiles) **
Duck (oyster): [, -1] (x16)
- produces 1 egg per turn
Dodo (oyster with harlequin shrimp): [n/a, 0] (x4)- produces 1 egg per turn, but cannot be eaten by a snake
Leaf (seagrass): [, 1] (x26)- five adjacent leaves will attract a caterpillar
Caterpillar (seahorse): [n/a, 5] (x5)- free tile placed on top of 5 adjacent leaves
Flower (anemone): [, 2] (x16)- three adjacent flowers will attract a bee
Bee (clownfish): [n/a, 5] (x5)- free tile placed on top of 3 adjacent flowers
Garbage (garbage): [free, -2] (x8)- a no cost tile, but counts as negative 2 beauty points
Turtle (feather worm): [, 2 or 0] (x12)- a turtle is worth 2 beauty points, but will "hide" when adjacent to a snake, giving 0 beauty points
Snake (sea star): [, 5] (x8)- moves 1 space per turn towards ducks (or dodo), can climb over any other tile except cactus, and will eat the duck (not the dodo) once it reaches them
Cactus (coral): [, 1] (x20)- impassable to snakes
Fountain (relic): [, 1 / 3 / 5] (x8)- a single fountain is worth 1 beauty point, two fountains are worth 3 each, and three or more fountains 5 points each
** I am somewhat limited by the available animal emojis on our forums, so I've adapted them to suit the game. As you can see, we don't have much of an Octopus' Garden anymore. It's more of a Zoo/Park, but all the values and attributes are identical to the original game.
Start:
Every player starts with 2 ducks and a dodo, which they immediately place in their garden. Each player also starts with 5 eggs. The market is then randomly filled with 9 tiles, and play begins.
Turn Sequence:
i. - Buy & Plant: Purchase tiles from the market (you can simply skip to step ii if you don't have enough money or do not wish to purchase) and lay them in your garden
ii - Move snakes: snakes take the shortest path towards the nearest duck, but must move around cactus (if there are no ducks remaining a snake will move towards the dodo)
iii - Harvest eggs: You get 1 egg from all remaining ducks/dodo.
Signup: (4-players)
Code:
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