Kodama: The Tree Spirits Review

You are a caretaker of a forest, growing trees with flowers, mushrooms and fireflies all inhabiting the little slice of nature that you preserve. But this is no ordinary forest, this forest is special. This forest is inhabited by Kodama. You must try to pander to these magical creatures by shaping your trees to meet their very specific and picky needs to become the greatest Kodama carer of all time.

In the game Kodama you must place tree branch cards down to build a tree, getting points from connecting rows of features (flowers, fungi, stars etc) along your tree. At the end of each season you can get extra points by having met certain conditions on Kodama cards. The person with the most points by the end of Autumn wins.

 

First off, this game is great to look at. It has beautiful art and all the Kodama cards are drawn with a really cute cartoon style. The act of building your tree adds to this visual masterpiece, as each turn you get to see your tree get bigger and bigger until you can look back on it at the end of the game and see what you have made.

In this game, you will be constantly working towards Kodama cards, which give you more points as you fulfil their requests more to their liking. These cards make you think carefully about how you might want to shape your tree, along with what features you want to focus on trying to accumulate. However, if you have nothing to do to advance towards one of your Kodama cards you can always collect points by chaining together the different icons that come up on each card, meaning that you can always do something. With several different options for tree branch cards which can be placed on multiple different spots on your tree, it can lead to over analysis as you cycle through all the different options you could take and how many points they would give you, which I find a bit boring.

My main problem with the game though, is the components, with such good art it feels tragic to

waste it on flimsy and thin cards, tiny counters and a point tracking board which is way too small. This is reinforced with a poorly written rulebook that is unclear and takes several read throughs before you understand what counts as a legal move. Personally, I think having a higher price to get some nicer pieces would definitely be worth it.

However, Kodama do include custom made Kodama scoring cards for children, which are in groups that are specially designed to be simple to play together. Each group has a specific focus, so younger players don’t have to try and think about getting all the different icons on their tree but just a few like mushrooms and caterpillars. This a really good addition which can make the game nicely accessible for smaller ones and lets them properly compete with their parents.

Overall, Kodama is a beautiful game that lets you grow your very own tree and while it does stumble a bit it is still fun to play. While I wouldn’t say it was a must buy, for those who are enticed by the                                                          art or want to play with children, this is definitely good purchase.