Let's Go Mushroom Hunting in Wonder Woods!

Morels, girolles, boletes, and parasol mushrooms! The woods are full of yummy mushrooms, ripe for harvesting. But the other players are after them, too, and you’ll have to choose carefully if you want to take home the most delicious ones.

Published by Blue Orange Games, Wonder Woods is a light, fast deduction game for 2-5 players and plays in roughly 15 minutes.

Gameplay

There are four different types of mushrooms in the game. Each one comes with its own board, and each board has five columns of spaces, with the columns growing longer from left to right. For example, the first column on each board only has one space while the last two both have four spaces. Each mushroom also has four cards associated with it, numbered one, three, five, and seven. For each mushroom, you shuffle its deck of cards and deal one face-down underneath that mushroom’s board. That card determines how many points the mushroom is worth at the end of the game. You then take all the remaining cards, shuffle them together, and deal them out to the players. Depending on the player count, you may place two cards back in the box or set four in a draw deck. These cards in your hand give you information about what points certain mushrooms will not be worth at the end of the game. Players then select a player color and take five baskets in that color. You are ready to start the game.

The game is played over a series of rounds, with each round being divided into two phases. During phase one, players take turns harvesting mushrooms. On your turn, you place baskets on a mushroom’s board. You must have enough baskets to fill the leftmost empty column; so if another player has already gone there this round, it will take more baskets for you to play there as well. After placing your baskets, you then take one of that type of mushroom from the supply. Players keep taking turns until they do not have enough baskets to take any more mushrooms. After everyone has finished taking turns, the player with the most baskets at each board takes one mushroom of that board’s type. If there is a tie, no one gets the bonus mushroom. If the supply runs out of a particular type of mushroom, you cannot get any more of that type.

Next, you move on to the information phase. During this phase, each player may choose to play one of their cards face-up and gain an extra basket. You can do this twice during the game. In a two-player game, a card is also revealed from the draw deck at this point. Everyone then takes back their baskets from the boards and a new round begins.

The game ends once the supply has run out of at least two mushroom types and you have finished the harvest round. The card under each board is revealed, displaying how many points each type of mushroom is worth. You count up all your points and the player with the highest total wins the game.

Review

Wonder Woods is a charming game. From the little mushroom meeples to the woodland artwork and wooden basket player pieces, it’s whimsical and delightful while having an engaging game behind the attractive components.

The deduction in Wonder Woods sucks you in. You know some information based on the cards in your hand. It might tell you all you need to know about a particular mushroom, or it might be bits and pieces spread out across multiple. But you don’t just make choices based on that — you’re also reacting based on what other players do. You can become paranoid about a particular mushroom if other players are avoiding it, or interested in one that everyone else seems to be loading up on.

This deduction carries through to the information phase when each player tries to decide which, if any, card they want to play. Those extra baskets can be important for gathering more mushrooms and being able to fill the longer columns, but there are so few cards that each one can actually say a lot and can mean different things to different players based on their own cards. Therefore, you have to choose carefully, and this control of information is quite fun to play with. There’s a bluffing element to it and you’ll also find yourself second-guessing why other players chose the cards they did to reveal.

Wonder Woods is a reimplementation of Curios, which we previously played and loved. The two games are almost identical, so it might be hard to justify having both in your collection, but Wonder Woods definitely has a higher component quality.

The game also is quite fast. Turns are quick, as is the game itself. With excellent player interaction, and the ability to play several games of it in one night, we found Wonder Woods to be delightful and definitely recommend it.

Pros: Attractive components, speed of game, player interaction

Cons: You might not want it if you already own Curios

Disclosure: we received a complimentary review copy of this game.