Molehill Meadows Preview

April 9, 2024

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Back in the summer of 2001 I wrote a preview for a fun new card game about building a Zoo. That game was Zuuli, from Unfringed, and it went on to be a huge hit. So huge that Oink Games have picked up the game and are reprinting it as Moving Wild! I’ve stayed in touch with Chris since then and he recently got in touch about his new game, Molehill Meadows. It’s a flip-and-write game in the same vein as Demeter (review here) and Pioneer Rails (review here), but instead of being set studying dinosaurs in space or building railways in the old west, you play as a mole digging around a garden, munching on worms and digging up flowers.

Yes, it’s as adorable as it sounds, and it’s a lot of fun.

Moley moley moley

The concept is simple. Each player starts with a sheet of paper with a garden on it divided into a grid. All over that garden are stones, flowers, coins, mounds of dirt, and other bits and pieces. Your mole has a starting point at the middle of the garden and has to dig tunnels around underground to collect the things littered around it. The tunnels you dig all have a shape, and that shape is dictated by the card drawn from the top of the pile. Each shape has a name based on the shape it describes, and they’re well-observed and funny.

molehill meadows cards — I particularly like Well Fed, and the mole throwing horns on Rock On 🤘

As with many games with Tetronimo-type shapes, you can flip and rotate the shape as you see fit, as long as it retains the same overall shape. The catch comes with how you place the next shape, and it’s probably the hardest concept to get across to new players. Each new shape can only share one edge with the existing tunnels. Sounds simple, right? In reality, it’s a little more complicated. It means your new square shape can’t place both blocks along a straight tunnel, because that’s two edges/faces. The same goes with trying to add a tunnel to a corner.

Take that First Aid shape in the image above. Tunnels can only ever join on the ends of the arms of the cross, which makes it a more difficult shape to fit than you might expect. It’s not really a ‘tetris’ game in the same way as something like Patchwork, Silver & Gold, or even A Feast For Odin is because for most of the game, you’ve got to leave spaces, rather than trying to fill them all. Once you understand that, it’s fine, there’s just a little learning curve for younger (and older) players.

Hip hip hooray, for Superworm!

Ot not, as it goes, as the worms in Molehill Meadows are all there to be eaten. Their sacrifice will not have been in vain, however, because eating worms allows you to charge up your various worm powers. Every worm eaten lets you tick off a box next to one of the powers, and once a power is full you can expend them for bonus effects. Things like drawing the next shape twice, allowing you to touch more than one face with the next tunnel, or even drawing your own, additional tunnels in a shape you choose.

a completed molehill meadows sheet — An example of a sheet at the end of a game. 43 points, not too shabby.

Those of you looking for something a bit more challenging in your games will enjoy these powers, especially when it comes to combining them. Let’s take making connections as an example. If you can connect the pairs of flowers, ants, or streams across the map there’s a potential for big bonus points. It’s not always easy to do, but it becomes easier if you employ some cunning mole strategy. Invest your worms in the ‘draw the next tunnel twice’ and ‘dig an additional 6 square tunnel’ powers, and then use them both at once and bam! All of a sudden you’ve made a 12 square passage right across the map.

The strategy doesn’t end there. At the start of each game, a pair of goal cards are chosen at random which gives you something to aim for. Those yellow flowers on the sheet aren’t worth anything usually, but get a goal card which rewards them and all of a sudden you’re digging tunnels north-west to try to get them all. It’s another little thing which adds some longevity to the game and stops it from getting stale too quickly.

Final thoughts

Molehill Meadows is super cute and a lot of fun. If you like flip-and-write games, you’ll love it. It’s as simple as that. I own a ton of this style of game, so I knew I was likely to enjoy it, and I wasn’t wrong. If you’ve ever played and enjoyed Silver & Gold, Aquamarine, Pioneer Rails, Demeter, Patchwork Doodle, Cartographers, or The Guild of Merchant Explorers, you’re going to enjoy it. Another very cool fact is that the game is being produced in an eco-factory in Europe with no plastic being used. The cellophane equivalent used on the box and cards is bio-degradable. That’s a huge deal and a really good example how how it can be done if publishers are willing to spend the money.

Other than the ‘tunnels may only touch one face’ rule, the only thing I found which caused any kind of problem was with some of the more complicated shapes. Befuddled and Cloud in particular. They’re made of more than four squares, so the geometric awareness needed to rotate and/or mirror the shapes can be confusing for children (and some adults) to get their head around. This is a friendly, fun game though, so there’s no reason not to help one another out.

I’m delighted to see another new game from Unfringed, and also to see something in a completely different style to Zuuli. It’s just the kind of thing we need more of, and we’re very lucky to be getting it from not only Chris & co, but also the folks at Dranda Games, Postmark Games, and other indie studios. Long may it continue. At around £20 it’s very easy for me to recommend Molehill Meadows. Go back yourself a copy now on Gamefound.

Preview copy kindly provided by Unfringed. Thoughts and opinions are my own.