Review: Flower Shower!

Introduction & Overview

The plants in your garden are thirsty. Make sure you don’t overwater or underwater them (if you do, you’ll lose points). Roll the right amount with your water die, grow your plants, and harvest as many points as you can.

This is how Flower Shower! is presented to us, a design by Sven M. Kübler (Tobi Knobi). First published in 2025 by Nürnberger-Spielkarten-Verlag (NSV) in a multilingual edition. The artwork is handled by Oliver Freudenreich (No Thanks!, Silver & Gold, The Downfall of Pompeii).

It is distributed in Spain by Fournier, as the NSV edition includes Spanish (the game is completely language-independent). It allows for 1 to 4 players, with a suggested minimum age of 8 and an approximate duration of 20 minutes. The MSRP is €12.95. For this review, a copy of the multilingual edition from NSV was used, kindly provided to us as a review copy by Fournier.

Important: if you already know the game and/or are only interested in my opinion about it, you can go directly to the Opinion section. The Content and Mechanics sections are especially intended for those who do not know the game and prefer to get a general idea of how it works.

Go to Personal Opinion

Components

Inside a standard two-piece cardboard box (lid and bottom), measuring 11.9×9.4×2 cm (similar to a standard box like Take 5! or No Thanks!), we find:

• Scorepad (paper)
• 5 Dice (plastic)
• Rulebook

How to Play

Flower Shower! is a dice game in which players try to optimally water the plants in their garden to maximize their score throughout the game. Each turn, all participants simultaneously roll their light blue water dice, while the active player for that turn also rolls a dark blue die and decides whether to reroll one of their two dice. Then, everyone adds the value of their light blue die to that of the dark blue die and must write the total in an empty droplet space on their sheet, passing the dark die to the next player clockwise. The numbers must be grouped to precisely reach the amount of water required by each row of flowers; matching the exact value awards positive points and dice bonuses, but overwatering or underwatering penalizes you with negative points depending on the difference. The sheet also includes a four-leaf clover and cacti, which grant big bonuses or prevent losses if filled with identical values, and an alternate map with intersecting flower stems that demand tighter water management. The game ends once all droplet spaces have been filled, at which point the final score is calculated on the scorepad, and the player with the most points is declared the winner.

Key Concepts

Let’s start with the main element of the game: the Sheets. Each player will have a sheet representing the garden plot to cultivate, featuring two sides (Garden A or Garden B). It displays a structure organized into three sections with three rows of flowers each, accompanied by square droplet-shaped spaces to record the water received and round spaces to record the points for each row. It also features illustrations and specific areas for a four-leaf clover, prickly cacti, bonus spaces, and a final scoring track at the bottom, including additional elements like intersecting stems on its reverse side. Participants will write their dice totals in the empty spaces, adding up the accumulated values in each row. Upon completing a row, the total is checked against the watering can value to calculate positive or negative points. Additionally, there are dice icons printed on the sheets that act as unlockable bonuses, which serve to trigger single-use advantages that allow players to alter final values or reroll dice during passive turns.

On the other hand, we have the six-sided Dice with values ranging from 1 to 6. Each player receives a light blue die that they roll simultaneously each turn to get their own value, while the dark blue die is managed by the active player of the turn, who rolls it along with theirs. The active player can decide whether to reroll one of the two dice. At the end of the rolling phase, all players must add the value of their individual light blue die to the result of the shared dark blue die to get the total number they will write on their sheet.

That is enough to get started.

Preparación de la Partida

1. Each player takes a sheet from the scorepad and a pencil (not included).
2. All players must make sure they play on the same side of the garden sheet.
3. Each player receives a light blue water die.
4. A starting player is chosen at random and receives the dark blue water die.

We are ready to begin!

Game Flow

A game of Flower Shower! takes place over as many turns as there are spaces on the score sheets. Each turn, one participant will be the active player, holding the dark blue die, while the rest of the participants act as passive players.

Each turn proceeds as follows:

1. Roll the dice. All players roll their light blue water dice at the same time. Additionally, the active player rolls the dark blue water die.
2. Reroll (active player only). The active player decides if they want to reroll one of their two dice (either the light blue or the dark blue) once.
3. Add and record the total. All players add the number on their light blue water die to the number on the active player’s dark blue water die. Each player writes the resulting total in any empty droplet space on their sheet.
4. Pass the turn. Once everyone has recorded their total, the dark blue die is passed to the next player clockwise, who becomes the new active player for the next turn.

During a passive turn, players can cross out and use any dice bonuses they have previously unlocked on their sheet. Several bonuses can be combined in a single turn:

• Value modifier (±1). Allows you to change the total sum by +1 or -1.
• Ignore a die (X). Allows you to ignore one of the two water dice (either the light blue or the dark blue) and record only the value of the remaining die.
• Reroll own die (Reroll arrows). Allows you to reroll your light blue water die a single time.

As the spaces in the garden are filled, the following rules and scoring apply depending on the area:

• Colorful flowers (Gardens A and B). When all the droplet spaces in a row are filled, their values are added together and compared to the number on the watering can:
  • If it matches exactly, the player scores +5 points in the round space and circles the adjacent die symbol. If all three die symbols in the same section are circled, their corresponding bonus for passive turns is unlocked.
  • If it is overwatered or underwatered, the player records the difference as negative points in the round space and cannot circle the die symbol.
• Thirsty four-leaf clover (Gardens A and B). Requires filling its three droplet spaces. At the end, the total of the three numbers is added as bonus points. If uniformity is achieved by recording the exact same number in all three spaces, you score +36 points instead.
• Prickly cacti (Gardens A and B). Requires filling its three droplet spaces. At the end, the total of the three numbers is added as negative points. If uniformity is achieved by recording the exact same number in all three spaces, negative points are avoided and a 0 is recorded.
• Flower stems (Garden B only). Consists of a blue stem and an orange stem that intersect, sharing a common droplet space. Their four spaces must be filled in any order:
  • If watered correctly (the orange stem needs a maximum of 20 water and the blue stem a minimum of 36), you score +5 points. If extra effort is made (less than 20 or more than 36), the difference is added on the far right as bonus points.
  • If overwatered or underwatered, the +5 points space is crossed out, and the difference from the requirement is recorded as negative points on the far right.

Game End

The game ends after the turn in which everyone has completed all the droplet spaces on their sheet. Players sum up the points from the colorful flowers, the four-leaf clover, and the cacti (subtracting the relevant negative points) in the spaces on the scoring table. The player with the highest total score is the winner. In case of a tie, victory is shared.

Personal Opinion

Do you remember that year when “crossword-style” games became all the rage? In 2018, two games were published that generated enormous momentum. On one hand, Ganz Schön Clever (here is its tocho-review), with just the right amount of interaction to keep players connected to the game (although it’s true that its online implementation is what allowed people to play games one after another like eating popcorn).

On the other hand, there was Welcome to… (here is its tocho-review), which left dice aside and used a deck of cards, creating the feeling of not depending so heavily on luck when it came to optimizing your personal sheet. That’s why this type of game is called a Flip & Write, as opposed to the Roll & Write category to which Ganz Schön Clever belongs.

It’s not that either of these games invented anything new, but they appeared at the perfect time—just before the pandemic. During lockdown, these types of games skyrocketed. They were cheap to produce (most of them could be enjoyed just by printing out the sheets). And that’s where the publisher responsible for today’s game comes in. If there is one label specialized in this type of design, it’s Nürnberger-Spielkarten-Verlag, better known by its acronym, NSV.

Within their catalog, we find quite well-known titles like Silver & Gold, Qwixx, or Qwinto, many of them predating the success of the two games mentioned at the beginning of this section. And, although the genre no longer has the same pull as it used to, the label maintains its editorial line. That is why today we are going to analyze a new proposal of this style. Let’s see how this Flower Shower! behaves on the table, but not before thanking Fournier (NSV’s distributor in Spain) for providing the review copy that makes this long review possible.

In Flower Shower!, each player will have to fill out a sheet where we find several rows of spaces to write numbers. Each of these rows will have a target value associated with it, and they relate to each other through arithmetic operations. If the player manages to get the exact result, they will receive a bonus. Otherwise, they will be penalized based on how far off they were, whether over or under. Some rows will have additional criteria, but in general, there will be an optimal value to reach.

On the sheet, we will find certain effects that players can activate after unlocking them. To do this, it will be necessary to reach the optimal value in all the rows of the group associated with that effect. These effects will allow you to modify a value, reroll dice, or ignore a die.

Oh, right… Now that I’ve written the word “die,” I realize I haven’t told you how the number that each player can write down each turn is determined. Well, it’s as simple as rolling two dice, the sum of which will result in the value to be written in any free space.

The twist is that it won’t always be the player themselves rolling the dice. Thus, each player will have their own die (translucent blue), but the player considered active will roll a second die (opaque dark blue). This second die applies to all players, not just the one who rolls it, adding its value to that of their own die.

The active player will have an additional privilege consisting of being able to reroll one of their dice, either their own or the shared one. If they choose the shared one, the reroll will obviously impact all players, who must wait for this player’s decision before writing anything down.

And that’s all there is to the game. In this way, a game of Flower Shower unfolds over as many turns as there are spaces on the sheet (twenty-four, specifically) until all players have completed it, proceeding then to the final scoring.

Roll Detail[/caption>

The game includes two types of sheet sides. One with three groups focused on achieving an exact value and a fourth with rows where you have to try to place matching values. On the other side, one of the three groups is replaced by two rows that cross each other, sharing a value.

The reason for including two sides in this type of game is usually that with just one, things would feel far too short. The downside is that with two, it doesn’t improve the situation much either. It’s true that the second side requires getting more specific values to make it perfect, but in the end, the lingering feeling is that there isn’t much to decide anyway.

Thus, Flower Shower! joins the endless list of bland Roll & Writes that work acceptably well in their first two games (one with each side), by which point the seams of the design are already showing and you won’t find any incentive to bring it back to the table.

I think it lacks weight in its decisions. In the end, during most turns you barely have any room for maneuver, so the filling algorithm is obvious. You’re going to save the single spaces for when the exact value comes up. You’re going to leave the high and low values for the final rows (which look to maximize and minimize the sum, respectively) and you’ll leave yourself the intermediate rows, which is where you can have a bit more management. But at the end of the day, as I said, you are on autopilot.

It also lacks those typical combos that allow players to hit small growth spurts and enjoy relatively satisfying synergies. Here, the most you can do is be happy because you managed to complete a segment and, with it, gain a single-use ability. Hooray! (note the sarcasm).

Obviously, this Flower Shower! falls far short of the titles mentioned at the beginning of this section. It has almost the same mechanisms as Ganz Schön Clever, but it lacks everything that makes Wolfgang Warsch’s design addictive and has led to a franchise (as has also happened with Welcome to…).

I’d say it works best at two players, since that way each participant acts as the active player for half of the turns the game lasts. The more participants, the fewer turns as the active player per person, and therefore, the less room for maneuver and the more autopilot takes over.

I think I don’t need to tell you that where this design falls flat is in its replayability. It doesn’t have enough interaction for players to feel pressured by their opponents, nor does it have enough variability to make you want to explore different paths. It lacks flavor.

Sheet Detail[/caption>

Let’s move on to production. The components of this product are minimal. A pad of double-sided sheets (with a different layout on each side) that serve their purpose well enough, and standard dice, four of them translucent (which always catch the eye more). The rulebook is well-structured and leaves no room for doubt. The typical small pencils are sorely missed.

The artistic style of Flower Shower! stands out for an aesthetic very typical of modern Roll & Write board games. The cover showcases a bright and casual atmosphere through the use of rounded typography, dynamic translucent dice, and a multicolor gradient that warms up as it transitions between pink, yellow, and green. The sheets are perhaps a bit too functional and leave barely any room for the illustrator to do anything.

And let’s wrap this up. Flower Shower! is a tedious proposal that structures its flow around the classic rolling of shared and individual dice to fill out arithmetic operations on a grid sheet. The alarming absence of satisfying synergies and combos causes the experience at the table to dissolve into absolute complacency, where mathematical optimization gives way to a predictable, autopilot development. Despite featuring a system to unlock functional abilities by matching rows exactly, it fails to offer interesting enough choices. This leads to a resolution algorithm so obvious that it cancels out any trace of tension or stimulating decision-making for the player. A proposal lacking spark that deflates from the very first roll and will hardly manage to justify its presence on the table. For all these reasons, I give it a…