Under the Leaves (EN)

Under the Leaves invites you to look where we often forget to look: beneath the foliage, around mushrooms, and beside tiny puddles. Your goal is to create a healthy and diverse garden capable of welcoming as many creatures as possible. Bees and hummingbirds gradually arrive, while a hidden world of tiny dwellers appears whenever your ecosystem provides exactly the right conditions.

On your turn, you choose one of three available tiles and add it to your garden. Placement rules are deliberately accessible: the new tile simply needs to share a complete side with a tile already in your garden. Behind that simplicity is a clever tile-laying game, because the position of every terrain space can trigger an entire chain of events.

Create a continuous sector containing at least three terrain spaces of the same colour and bees arrive to pollinate it. Better yet, when you create a new pollinated sector of a particular colour, your previously pollinated sectors of that colour also receive another bee. Your garden therefore becomes increasingly productive, rewarding placements that prepare several opportunities at once.

Hummingbirds require a different approach. When all the terrain spaces on a tile belong to pollinated sectors, that tile attracts a hummingbird. Creating a row or column of three tiles that have already attracted hummingbirds can bring even more of them into your garden. A single tile can ultimately hold up to three hummingbirds, adding another layer to your strategic garden game.

And garden life extends well beyond pollinators. Leaves, puddles, and mushrooms have their own dwellers, each associated with specific conditions shown on cards. Four cards are included for each of these three categories, allowing the conditions in play to vary between games. You are constantly encouraged to examine your entire garden and find the placement capable of attracting the greatest amount of life.

After 12 rounds, every player has built a 13-tile garden. One final competition rewards biodiversity: the player with the majority of each type of garden dweller receives two additional pieces of that type, with tied players all receiving the bonus. Players then count every creature in their garden. Whoever has collected the most wins, with hummingbirds followed by bees serving as the tiebreakers.

You will enjoy Under the Leaves if you want an approachable family strategy game filled with satisfying little decisions. It is particularly well suited to players who enjoy building their own tableau, spotting combinations, and watching something become richer with every turn. Player interaction remains light: everyone primarily develops their own garden, while tile selection and the end-game majority bonuses provide the main competitive elements.

One of the most interesting features of Under the Leaves is how it creates chain reactions from remarkably simple rules. A single tile placement can enlarge a sector, trigger pollination, add bees elsewhere in your garden, attract a hummingbird, and simultaneously complete a condition for a tiny garden dweller. This cascading structure fits the game's listed Chaining, Connections, and Tile Placement mechanisms particularly well. The variable dweller cards also help change the puzzle from one game to the next.

Under the Leaves was designed by Trevor Benjamin and Brett J. Gilbert, with artwork by Paulina Victoria. Benjamin is also known for several games in the Undaunted series as well as Resist!, while Gilbert officially credits Under the Leaves as a collaboration with Benjamin. Victoria's gentle, organic artwork gives the garden its distinctive personality and complements this nature board game built around creating a thriving miniature ecosystem.

BOX CONTENTS
4 starting garden tiles
50 garden tiles
48 hummingbird tokens
66 bee tokens
20 leaf dweller tokens
20 puddle dweller tokens
20 mushroom dweller tokens
4 leaf dweller cards
4 puddle dweller cards
4 mushroom dweller cards
1 cloth bag
1 rulebook

Number of players: 2 to 4
Playing time: 25 to 40 minutes
Age: 8+