…just ignore the part where I’m posting this in April. In the Midwest. Because hey, the board game Harvest Time is pan-seasonal! It’s also from the same company as Max, The Secret Door, Eyes of the Jungle, and Caves & Claws, which seems to always be good for some simple, cooperative fun.
In this particular game, players are trying to harvest their vegetables before winter comes. There are four gardens – if you have more than four players have some team up on the same gardens, or if you have gardens to spare, a particularly ambitious player might tend multiples.
In standard gameplay, you start with your garden prepopulated – four types of vegetables, with three of each – and roll to harvest. The green dot on the die means you should harvest peas, the red dot means you should harvest tomatoes, etc. with the black dot denoting good soil – pick any vegetable you want! – and the white dot indicating that winter is on its way. If you roll white, choose one of the six winter pieces to place over the fall scene in the middle of the board. Your objective is for everyone’s gardens to be harvested before the winter scene is complete!
There are a few special rules to help with that. First off, you can help other people with their gardens! Whenever your roll would allow you to harvest, you can choose to harvest that color vegetable from a neighbor’s crop (and give it to them; you’re helpers, not thieves). This is especially practical when you’ve finished harvesting your own of that color, and your neighbor has not. If there’s none of that color left in any garden, reroll the die.
The other rules are even cooler warmer: as soon as your garden is completely harvested, you get to remove one winter piece from the board. Furthermore, when you roll white now, you get to remove another winter piece! If you’re thinking “but seasons don’t work like that!” …you probably don’t live in the Midwest.
If you’d prefer to play the extended version, it’s really easy to set up: just make planting a part of gameplay! The fall scene is actually its own set of tiles that cover the spring scene on the board (Why do we skip summer? Who knows!) so gameplay is the same, you just roll for what to plant and dread fall’s approach instead of winter’s. Or rather, before winter’s, because once you’ve finished planting – or fall has finished your planting for you, whichever comes first – you roll straight into the harvesting part of the game! I personally find this version much more fun because the better you do in the first half, the harder the next part is. And on the flip side, a really dismal planting season means you’ll probably be able to bring it all in before the frost! It’s a “glass is always full” situation, really.
