Unless you’re reading The Last March of the Ents, trees are not often associated with violence. In most media, forest scenes are often accompanied by slow woodwind instrumentals, quiet moments of reflection, with gentle, babbling brooks nourishing the woodland animals who happen to be passing by. Nature, however, is far from protective and nurturing. It’s ruthless, amoral, and truly neutral. And yet, if I had a nickel for every cutthroat tree game in my collection, I’d have two nickels. Which is not a lot, but it’s weird that it’s happened twice.

Photosynthesis by designer Hjalmar Hach and published by Blue Orange Games in 2017 is deceptively gentle. You’re growing trees. How bad can growing trees be? You earn light points when your trees bask in the sun and spend those light points to cast seeds, grow trees, and eventually “harvest” your most majestic specimens for victory points. It’s the circle of life, in cardboard form.

The central hook of Photosynthesis, the rotating sun, is quite an elegant mechanic. The sun moves along the edge of the forest board, changing the direction the sun is shining down at, so with every turn, the tactical landscape changes. What used to be covered in light is now cast in shadow. The trees that earned you so many light points just a few rounds ago, are now fallow and useless. I don’t know if you picked up on this rule, but trees cast shadows, and any tree sitting in the shade of a bigger or same size tree does not earn light points. So not only are you plotting your trees and their shade patterns to maximize your light point generation, you’ll be purposefully trying to shade your opponent’s trees, to deprive them of the light they need to flourish.

There’s a moment, somewhere around the start of the second revolution, where you look down at the board, past the whimsical canopy of cardboard evergreens, and realize you’ve become the thing you despised: a cutthroat botanical tyrant. You didn’t mean for this to happen. You were drawn in by the colours. Seduced by the promise of a quiet, serene forest, the relaxing energy of trees basking in the sunshine as you sit in their shadows. But then the sun moves, and your opponent’s prize sapling suddenly casts a long, greedy shadow across half the grove, and you feel something twist in your heart. That’s not just shade, that’s purposeful sabotage. And you swear. Out loud. At a cardboard tree.

People generally come to Photosynthesis with one of two minds. They either want to maximize their own light, or, purposefully, try to minimize the light their opponents get. You’ll find yourself stunting enemy trees on purpose, planting your own just to create shade in exactly the right spot. Not because you need the space, but because it’ll choke out a rival’s main income. I’ve ended friendships for smaller things.

Mechanically, Photosynthesis is as sharp as a monkey puzzle tree. It’s totally deterministic, with absolutely no luck involved. It’s all down to planning. It’s the kind of game where misreading the board state two turns ahead will leave you gasping for light while it feels like else is rolling in solar power. The rules themselves are straightforward, the rulebook is only 4 pages long. But the decisions Photosynthesis offers are dense. It’s chess-like at two players, while being crowded and choking at four. It feels like a different game at every player count.

I do want to mention that the process for buying and growing trees feels a little disjointed. You collect sun points on the south end of the board, but the trees on the north end are the ones that grow? You can’t grow trees unless you unlock them from your player board, and when you replace pieces on the main board, the pieces go back into the locked spots on your player board. There are some interesting cadence decisions, as the size of the tree determines how many light points it collects, but only the biggest trees can be harvested for points. You finally finish your 7 turn project just to pay light points to lose your ability to earn more light points. The timing considerations are intense.

And while I admire the no-luck, pure strategy design, There’s always the potential of someone getting the short end of the proverbial stick. Bad starting positions and cutthroat players can kneecap someone’s ability to earn sunlight for most of the rounds. While everyone else is pulling in 7, 8, or 9 sunlight, one person is only bringing in 1 point. When you have no income, you can’t pivot your strategy. The rich get richer in the worst sort of way.

And then there’s the downtime. Especially at higher player counts, because the game is so deterministic, every turn can become a grind of analysis paralysis. The board state shifts constantly, And because turns are solitary, as in, one player takes all their actions for the round, then the next player goes, players can be considering 5 or 6 actions at a time. You’ll spend a lot of time in silence waiting for someone to make their decisions, before you start considering what you can do, based on what they just did.

If it sounds like I’m being down on Photosynthesis, it’s not on purpose. It’s clever, elegant, and unique. The aesthetic is gorgeous. It’s the rare abstract strategy game that has a genuine presence on the table. It looks like a dream and plays like a knife fight in a phone booth. I quite enjoy my plays of it, even if I come away feeling like I fell from a height and hit every branch on the way down.