Gamehelpgardensofio

Goal

Gardens of Io is an abstract strategy game for 2–5 players designed by Néstor Romeral Andrés. Plant flowers on a square grid to form connected color clusters, score points, and advance your Martian around the 40-space perimeter track. The player furthest along the track wins.

Components

Component	Icon	Description
Flowers		Flowers in 6 vibrant colors (Blue, Green, Orange, Purple, Red, Yellow) held in player reserves and planted onto board spots.
Martians		Martian gardeners (Ali, Bob, Bot, Marty, Robby) racing along the 40-space perimeter scoring track.
Trees		3 permanent obstacles on the board that block gardener sightlines.
Special Actions		5 one-time special action tiles available to manipulate board pieces or sprint ahead.

Setup

• Reserve: Each player draws flowers from the shared bag: 2 players get 27 flowers each; 3 players: 18; 4 players: 14; 5 players: 11. Unused flowers remain in the bag.
• Trees: 3 trees are placed on the grid (by default randomly; with the variant option, placed alternately by players). Trees never disconnect the grid.
• Martians: Each player's Martian starts on space 0 (top-left corner of the perimeter track).

Your turn

On your turn, execute the following steps:

1. Special action (optional)

Before planting, you may use one available special action token (maximum 1 per turn, up to 1 per game; 2 in a 2-player game):

• Swap Tree & Flower: Swap any planted tree with any planted flower.
• Swap Flowers: Swap any two planted flowers on the board.
• Move Flower: Move any one planted flower to an empty circle.
• Move Tree: Move any tree to an empty circle.
• Advance 5: Instantly move your Martian 5 spaces forward on the track (scores 5 points).

A player's colored disc marks used special actions.

2. Planting

• Place one flower from your reserve onto an empty circle that lies in a direct straight or diagonal line from your Martian's current track position (corners only have diagonal lines).
• Trees block lines of sight; flowers do not.
• If no empty circle is reachable along your sightlines, you must skip planting and move forward 1 space.

3. Scoring and moving

• Count the total number of connected flowers of the same color touching the newly planted flower horizontally or vertically (up, down, left, right). Diagonal adjacencies do not connect.
• Advance your Martian forward along the track by that many spaces.
• Spaces occupied by rival Martians are skipped over without counting. You cannot end your move on an occupied space.

4. Extra turns

• If you plant the last remaining flower of a color in play (zero left across all player reserves), you immediately take another complete turn!

End of the game and scoring

The game ends immediately when:

• Any player exhausts all flowers from their reserve (the round completes so all players take equal turns).
• The leading Martian laps the trailing Martian by a full 40-point lap.

The player furthest along the track wins!

Variants

• Lap bonus: Crossing the start line allows drafting one flower from the board back into your reserve.
• Cooperative mode: Players collaborate to maximize score; team score equals the trailing Martian's position.

Controls on BGA

• Planting: Click a flower in your reserve, then click any highlighted legal circle on the board. Click Confirm to finalize.
• Special actions: Click an active special action button in the action bar, select the board targets, and confirm.
• Tooltips: Hover over flowers or board circles to view potential cluster connection scores.