Photosynthesis

Photosynthesis. 2017. Hjalmar Hach. Art by Sabrina Miramon. Blue Orange, 2017.

2-4 players | 30-60 minutes | Age 10+

Photosynthesis is a green strategy board game in which players plant and grow their own forest. The participants play through the lifecycle of a tree species, from its seedling to its rebirth. The goal is to establish your own forest, building a bigger forest in the limited space than your opponents.

Photosynthesis is a game where players take on the role of a species of tree to compete for space and sunlight in a forest. The forest is represented by a hexagonal board on which are uniform circles for players to place individual trees. The sun moves around the board, delivering ‘light points’ to players depending on their tree’s relative position and life stage, while shaded trees will receive no points. More points are given to trees at the centre of the board and trees at later stages of their lifecycle. These points then act as a currency to be exchanged for seeds to place on the board or grow seedlings into saplings, then saplings into larger trees. Players must strategically position and grow their trees to effectively capture light points while denying light points to other players. The endgame of Photosynthesis involves a harvesting mechanic where players will ‘end the life-cycle’ of large trees for points, with the player with the most points winning the game.

Chloé Germaine (2022) proposes that the rules of Photosynthesis are ‘mismatched’ to its framework, aesthetics, and imaginings, drawing similarities between the board game and war games. She writes that the mechanics of area control, expansion, resource taking and collection, ‘buying’, and upgrading all mirror typical wargame mechanics and positions trees as a passive resource for human management and consumption. Because Photosynthesis interprets forests as arenas of competition, Germaine contends that the game upholds a ‘survival of the fittest’ doctrine. Instead, she cites Suzanne Simard, who describes an ‘extraordinary generosity’ of woodlands between each collaborator in its ecology (Simard 2021: 11). In recent nature writing these sentiments have also been expressed. Commenting on Emmanuel Coccia’s plant philosophy, Wohlleben says: ‘[h]e thinks it is a great shame that for the past one hundred years we’ve seen nature as a huge war zone […] On the contrary, it is characterised by solidarity’ (2021: 110). A shift in the rules that enables players to collaborate to produce this kind of natural solidarity, rather than having to compete, would relieve some of the tensions that Germaine describes between mechanics and aesthetics of Photosynthesis. For example, when the player ends the life-cycle of a tree, the tree will enter a ‘decaying’ stage where its body will nourish the soil with nutrients and propagate the growth of fungi. In this stage, each adjacent seed or tree to the decaying tree will progress through a life stage, and points will be earned for each tree nourished this way. However, Photosynthesis’ design does not only operate through warlike mechanics as each player must propagate and nourish their seeds and saplings with light which allows feelings of affection and care to arise during gameplay. A final remark must be made about Photosynthesis’s beautiful artstyle and game pieces that constantly remind players of forests’ beauty throughout the earth.

Content adapted from the Ecogame Ludography created by Seth Etchells, Chloé Germaine, Charlotte Gislam, Lucy Roberts, Paul Wake, and Jack Warren.

References

Germaine, C. 2022. ‘‘Nature’ Games in a time of Climate Crisis’, in C. Germaine and P. Wake (eds.), Material Game Studies: A Philosophy of Analogue Play, London: Bloomsbury.
Simard, S. 2021. Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest, New York: Alfred A. Kopf.
Wohlleben, P. 2021. The Heartbeat of Trees. Translated by Jane Billinghurst. London: William Collins.