Haunticulture is live (Monster gardeners)
Update: Haunticulture has launched on Kickstarter and the campaign will run for 27 days. You may pledge for a standard copy of the game or get it together with transparent overlay cards and a playmat. You can also commission the artist to make a monster card in your likeness.
Our preview post below was published on October 21.
Haunticulture is a 1-4 player hand management game in which monsters tend to the gardens of Creepstone Manor. It will launch on Kickstarter on October 22.
In the multiplayer mode of Haunticulture, players compete with each other for the title of Head Haunticulturist. In the solo mode, you will calculate your points and check if you can be called a (Gan)green-fingered Wonder or if you still need fertilizer. The solo player will have to play with three different decks of cards and cultivate three different gardens. Gameplay consists of four rounds with three phases each: the Gardener phase, the Planting phase, and the Tidy Up phase.
You start with a hand of 6 monster cards. In the Gardener phase, you play a card on the table inside a 3x3 grid made of Greenhouse cards. Each monster has a number that shows its efficiency and one or two abilities that trigger when it is placed in the garden. You repeat this three times, playing cards from all three decks. Then, you count up the score from the monsters' Gardening skills and take tiles from the Greenhouse for each of your gardeners.
In the Planting phase, you place the tiles in each of the personal gardener boards by following placement rules. In the Tidy Up phase, you remove all played monster cards, refresh the Greenhouse tiles, and begin another round. When 4 rounds have been completed, you tally up your points from all three gardens. You can choose between easy, intermediate or hard levels of difficulty.