Bloom
Review

Bloom (2019) is a roll-and-write game where you compete to become the most successful flower seller. You roll dice and mark off colour combinations of flowers to score points. You need to balance allotting dice to individual bouquets or a larger volume of simpler arrangements. It's a game about choosing when to complete tasks well and when to just get them finished.

You start by randomly allocating one of the five different Flower Bed sheets to each player. This acts as both their playing board and scoring sheet. It is made up of six flower beds, each with twelve differently coloured, randomly assorted flowers in them.

One player starts by rolling all six dice, five of these are the colours of the flowers and one is clear - this is a wild dice. You then take turns selecting a coloured dice from the middle and draw a loop around that number of flowers. For example, a yellow four means that you are aiming to circle four yellow flowers which are aligned horizontally or vertically on your pad. Sometimes this is not possible and you have to circle flowers of the wrong colour or miss one flower, you then make a mark next to an unhappy customer for each incorrect action. Once all players have selected a dice, the round is over.

You continue rolling, selecting and marking until someone has completed four flower beds or all the flowers for three colours. You then score positive points for completed flower beds and for being 1^st, 2^nd or 3^rd to circle all of one colour of a flower. You subtract the unhappy customer tally and find your final score. The player with the most points wins.

It's a lovely gentle game about arranging flowers. What makes it fascinating is racing opponents to finish combinations, whilst also sharing the same resources. Sometimes you should hold out for the perfect combination, while at other times you should grab the dice an opponent needs and score quick points. You learn to make decisions about when to complete tasks well and when to just finish them quickly.

Our examiner, Rob Prior, first checked Bloom 19 months ago. It was re-examined by Jo Robertson and updated 10 months ago.