Review: Bonsai (DV Games)

There’s something magical about bonsai trees. The first time I saw one, I thought it was a model made from plastic and silk leaves. It couldn’t possible be a real tree. But yes, it was real. And it was miraculous.

That magical moment came back vividly when I opened Bonsai from DV Games. Granted, I’m already a fan of tile-laying games, but the designers of Bonsai took that mechanic to a brilliant new level.

Let’s dive into the top five things you need to know about Bonsai before I gush away the whole review in the introduction.

A Game of Cards and Tiles

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Bonsai’s components are simple and thematically illustrated. The game includes a deck of 47 Zen cards, over 150 Bonsai tree tiles, five sets of goals, and four player pot tiles.

The Zen cards affect the game’s flow and present new point scoring options. The tree tiles represent your Bonsai tree itself and the features you decide to grow on it. The goal tiles create a varying set of victory conditions that make every game a slightly different challenge.

The Pot’s Secret

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The player pot tiles include an Easter egg that demonstrates the game’s attention to cultural details. Each double-sided player pot has gold lines on it, which the game calls “the gold crack.” The crack serves a purpose in scoring goal tiles, but is never explained beyond that.

Those lines represent the 400-year-old Japanese art of Kintsugi, where broken ceramic pieces are repaired with lacquer and gold to highlight the break and honor the object’s history. The repair makes the item more beautiful and valuable than it was before. The crack and its repair also become a metaphor for how the scars of life make us stronger and uniquely resilient.

Picking an Action

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Players can choose one of two actions each turn. The Meditate action lets you draw a card from the face-up display. The Cultivate action lets you add new tiles to your Bonsai tree.

During a Meditate action, the current player chooses any face-up card from the board and adds it to their tableau. The game board displays four available Zen cards, with bonus tile icons below three of the card spaces. The cards fill the board from left to right; the bonus icons sit under the right-most spaces.

If the card’s space has bonus icons under it, the player performs that action immediately when drawing the card. Depending on the card selected, the player may also draw or play tree tiles, or simply hold the card to use in the future.

Cultivating a Tree

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During a Cultivate action, the player starts by checking the cards in their tableau and the Bonsai tiles they previously collected.

The tableau cards govern how many tiles they can store at the end of each turn and the number and type of tiles they can add to their Bonsai tree when they Cultivate. The cards show a mix of icons for each of the four tree tiles (wood, leaf, flower, and fruit) plus a wild icon that represents any type of tile.

Adding the tiles to your tree connects you to the ancient art of Bonsai itself. You choose the direction the tree’s wood will grow, whether it will be lush or sparse with its leaves, and where its flowers and fruits will sprout. All of these choices can affect the way the tree scores points at the end of the game.

Parchments and Goals

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The tile placements you choose generate your victory points at game end. The parchment cards you drew and goal tiles you claimed boost your score even more.

Parchment cards grant you extra victory points for the tiles in your tree and for the cards you drew during the game. The game includes a variant rule that front-loads the draw deck with parchment cards to emphasize strategic choices and reduce the luck of the draw.

Each game’s goal tiles are chosen randomly during game setup. Each time you play, you use three of the five sets of goal tiles. The mix creates variable bonus options and adds to the game’s replayability.

You claim a single goal tile at the end of a turn when you fulfill the tile’s conditions. You can choose to skip a low value tile and try to claim a higher value one later in the game, but if you do that, you can’t go back and claim the one you skipped.

Verdict

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With easy to learn rules, no-reading-required game components, and a gorgeous table presence, Bonsai is a thoroughly enjoyable game.

At its heart, the game engages players by presenting a mix of artistic and strategic challenges. Do you grow your tree with an eye toward completing a goal tile or do you maximize the points from tile placements and hope for some lucky parchment card draws?

The physical act of building and expanding your Bonsai tree feels almost soothing. And when the game ends, your table holds a bunch of delightful player creations.

Since everything in the game is icon-driven, younger kids can play either on their own or with a partner. As a bonus, the game’s multiple solitaire options mean it can hit the table over lunch or when your regular gaming group is somewhere else.

Bonsai deserves a place on your shelf. Highly recommended.