Photosynthesis is an exisiting board game designed by Hjalmar Hach and Illustrated by Sabrina Miramon. I really liked the concept of the game:
- Spread seeds in smart places
- Grow the seeds into trees
- Cast shadows to block other trees from collecting sunlight
- Collect more sunlight with your trees than the other players
- Use your accumulated sun energy to spread more seeds
- Rinse and repeat
The colour coding is essential to identifying each player’s pieces. This made me think that it would be a cool idea to create a version featuring New Zealand native flora.
How I chose which plants to use in the game
I chose the following plants, based on these criteria:
- Distinctive colour
- Characteristic silhouette
- Interesting seed shapes and stages of growth
Robert Venell’s The Meaning of Trees, was an excellent reference for botanical inspiration for this project. It has great illustrations and photos with informative write ups in an easy to digest format. I’d recommend this book to anyone with an interest in this sort of stuff:
