Gardeners

About this board game

Gardeners is a simultaneous cooperative game for 1–4 players, played silently and in real time in less than 15 minutes. Using the same set of 36 tiles, players work together to arrange as many gardens as possible while responding to a different rule in each round.

The rules are not explained directly. Instead, everyone must deduce the constraint in force by observing where tiles are placed and identifying which tiles have been removed. Since players cannot communicate about what to do—or what not to do—the group must interpret the evolving garden through observation alone.

Each game consists of an indefinite number of rounds. Every round follows five phases:

• Draw a Constraint card
• Start the sandtimer
• Arrange the garden
• Check the garden
• Prepare for the next round

The real-time structure keeps each arrangement focused, while the changing constraints require players to reassess the garden from round to round. Success depends on noticing the information revealed by the tiles and working toward a valid arrangement without spoken coordination.

As the rounds continue, the challenge is to satisfy as many of the King’s whimsical desires as possible. Gardeners turns a simple set of tiles into a quiet test of shared deduction, timing, and nonverbal cooperation.