Brettspiel-News.de – Review | Aqua Garden

Posted by Jean Magona on March 21, 2022.

Page 1 of 2

Suddenly the idea of ​​opening an aquarium in the city gives you a fever. Oh no, but what is it? At the same time, more people began to build an aquarium in the same city. What an unfortunate coincidence. The competition is already promoting giant whale sharks and sea turtles. Now it’s time to be quick at the Aquarium for more special samples.

Uchibacoya has provided us with an Aqua Garden for review. This has no effect on our rating!

What is the game about?

Aqua Garden is a strategy building game about designing tanks in an aquarium. These sea creatures are filled to create a beautiful display or to meet the requirements of landmark cards. Completed cards and full tanks give you victory points, which ultimately leads to winning the game.

Initially, each person is given a water board with six tanks. Between each tank there is a starter box, through which two tanks can be reached. The panel with the aquarium gallery is placed in the middle of the table, on which there is a path divided into fields on which small sea creatures are randomly distributed. There is also a large board on which all corals and seaweed are poured and five sea creatures are placed at random. Each person is given an event card containing a specific group of marine organisms and/or corals and seaweeds.

And in turn, move your character forward on the path to the Aquarium Fair. It only goes in one direction and you can run forward as far as you want. Skipping many squares can be a good thing if a high-scoring sea creature is waiting, but everything skipped is lost. If you enter a space with an animal of your choice, first move your employee or staff forward in your aquarium in order to position the figure next to the correct tank in which the newly acquired animal will be placed.

Each tank has an oxygen level of four, and every marine creature uses some oxygen. Small clown fish use one oxygen, while giant whale sharks use four oxygen. With seaweed, the oxygen level can be increased to six.

This is also necessary to complete some milestones. Below the aquarium gallery are cards with special star combinations that must be in a tank so that this card can be marked by your own. Completing an achievement earns you points and even additional sea creatures if you are the first person to complete the task.

In addition to the sea creatures from the Aquarium exhibit, money can also be spent to purchase items from the coral and seaweed platter. In order to get money, the event card event can be played. This is almost always the case when an employee gets to completely screw around with their aquarium plan. Or instead of a space with a marine creature in the aquarium exhibit, a space with advertisements for your aquarium is used. There is a choice of four different ads, each promoting a specific type of sea creature for which money is paid.

Depending on the number of people, this takes a few rounds and at the end there is an evaluation. Individual sea creatures bring different number of points, milestones bring points, extra money, and your character’s location in the aquarium gallery.

Advanced rules and add-ons

The base game includes an expanded base that offers special types of fish that can be purchased when using a promotional space. All three expansions bring more of these special fish cards. Only the first expansion “Outdoor” expands the game with special abilities for all characters.