About Solarpunk Oxygen Farms
🌳Planta Nubo is a solarpunk ☀️ themed euro game. Solarpunk normally hints at an ecological utopia where nature and technology can both thrive in harmony - the story of this game is not entirely utopian however, as according to the setting people only realized the error of their ways when only burning soil was left. Now living atop giant trees, you are building oxygen farms and cultivating flowers and forests to make green energy. ♻️
It’s quite hard to summarize Planta Nubo, so let me highlight the action selection and the player boards, as those are the focal points. 🔎
🔧Action tiles are laid out in a grid, where each tile has either actions or flower polyominoes. To choose your action, you put a tool between two action tiles each turn and activate one of them. An interesting restriction is that each tile can only have one of the same tool type next to it, so players quickly start to (inadvertently or deliberately) block each other. Another fun twist is that you only place down 3 tools, then the 4th one is used to activate an end of round bonus, so it doesn’t just matter what you use, but what you keep. 😉
💐Your player board is mainly there to hold flower beds and forest tiles. Whenever you place flower beds you fill them up with flower cubes, which you want to clear off to be able to plant forest tiles on top - ☝️ forests provide you with oxygen, aka. victory points. Flower cubes can be used up in multiple ways, most notably you deliver them to freight containers in exchange for green energy, which lets you move your die around to charge up cards that you draft that make up your “engine”.
💭Our first impressions are a bit lukewarm. I would say it is a solid game and the overall gameplay had many elements we liked, but it also didn’t really surprise us in any way compared to other games we played this year. The fun comes from drafting synergistic cards, and having the right cubes at the right time so you can deliver them. The box has Uwe Rosenberg’s name on it too, but don’t let that fool you. While there are some polyominoes, it feels different than his usual games!
