Takenoko! It sounds like a war cry from an Eastern warrior. When we look a the front of the box this first changes immediately; a cute panda bear who wanders somewhat confused through a pastel coloured garden, an umbrella in its hand, eh, pawn. The rules of the game start with a short comic that explains the background of this panda bear: it is a present from the Chinese emperor to his Japanese colleague who now has to give this panda an appropriate housing. A garden is found for this purpose, full of bamboo to feed the animal, and including a gardener who has to take care that the bamboo keeps on growing. Apparently a stressful job, when you look at the gardener’s expression. This rather unusual theme has been translated to a board game, where by placing garden tiles (called plots), growing bamboo, and collecting (eating) it again, the players try to achieve related objectives. As can be expected, points are scored for achieving the objectives.

The objectives form the core of Takenoko, and come in three categories. For the garden objectives some tile configuration must be present in the garden. To complete a panda objective a player must have collected certain pieces of bamboo from the garden, while for a gardener objective a certain bamboo configuration must be present in the garden.

With the throw of the “weather dice” a player will usually have some advantage during the rest of his turn: a third action for example, or the possibility to perform two identical actions. When sometimes during a player’s turn an objective is achieved, this is shown to the other players and the card is placed in front of the player.

Takenoko has everything a good family game needs nowadays: quickly set-up and explained, challenging, but not too difficult, considerations trying to achieve objectives as fast as possible. Finally, the game looks very nice, with the gardener and panda figures and the bamboo shoots, which 'really' start to grow all over the garden.

Player interaction is sufficiently provided, since players will help or hinder each other, depending on their objectives. The more experienced player will complain about the lightness of the game, and the luck involved in throwing the dice and drawing objective cards. Indeed, a lucky throw of the dice in the final turn could mean a difference of several points, a difference between victory and defeat.

Also, drawing objective cards towards the end of the game could mean the objectives are immediately satisfied, a phenomenon which can be suppressed by the so-called expert variant. But this is something the game not really needs: it is a nice atmospheric family game, where the winner typically thinks he played pretty good, and the others “complain” about lack of luck. Some negative remarks need to be made as well: the pictures on the weather dice are quite difficult to read, and a mistake is made in the translation of the tile placement action. But these are just minor ripples in the pond, to stay in tune with this game.