Review: Under the Leaves

Introduction & Overview

If we manage to keep our garden healthy and diverse, it will fill with life and become a sanctuary for fascinating creatures. Hummingbirds and bees are the first to arrive, filling the air with color and movement. But if we stop to take a closer look, we will discover a hidden, unknown world: tiny inhabitants abound among the mushrooms, puddles, and foliage. They live right under our feet, going unnoticed… until we decide to look Under the Leaves.

This is how Under the Leaves presents itself, a design by Trevor Benjamin and Brett J. Gilbert (Great Plains, Mandala). First published in 2025 by Fractal Games in an English and Spanish edition. The illustrations are handled by Paulina Victoria (Mahé, Big or Bang).

It is published in Spain by Rocket Lemon Games (the pattern cards display their effects in text format, in addition to the rulebook). It allows games for 2 to 4 players, with a minimum suggested age of 8 years and an approximate duration between 25 and 40 minutes. The MSRP is €24.95. For this review, a copy of the Spanish edition by Rocket Lemon Games was used, kindly provided to us as a review copy by the publisher.

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 two-piece cardboard box (lid and bottom), measuring 23×16×4.5 cm (a medium rectangular box similar to Arigatō), we find the following components:

• 50 Garden Tiles (cardboard)
• 4 Starting Tiles (cardboard)
• 16 Creature Cards (4 of each type)
• 20 Leaf Creature Tokens (wooden)
• 20 Puddle Creature Tokens (wooden)
• 20 Mushroom Creature Tokens (wooden)
• 48 Hummingbird Tokens (wooden)
• 56 Bee Tokens (wooden)
• 10 Bee x3 Tokens (wooden)
• Cloth Bag
• Rulebook

How to Play

Under the Leaves is a game where each player must build a healthy, diverse garden to attract hummingbirds, bees, and fascinating hidden creatures. Over 12 rounds, players take turns divided into two phases: placing a garden tile and the potential arrival of new creatures. In the first phase, players select one of the three tiles available in the display to place in their personal grid, with the option to rotate or flip it to match colors and puddles. During the second phase, creature attraction is checked: bees arrive at newly formed habitats of three or more matching terrain spaces, while hummingbirds nest on tiles whose terrain spaces are fully pollinated or form three-tile lines with other hummingbirds. Finally, players can discover leaf, puddle, or mushroom creatures by fulfilling specific spatial patterns shown on their active cards. Once the tile deck is exhausted, all accumulated tokens are tallied, awarding bonus points for majorities in each creature type; the player with the highest score wins, with hummingbirds and bees serving as tiebreakers.

Key Concepts

Let’s begin with the Garden Tiles. Each garden tile serves as the basic building block and consists of four individual spaces. These spaces can depict one of five terrain types (pink, brown, yellow, orange, or purple) or a puddle. Tiles are divided into two types: those that include a puddle (alongside one terrain space of one color and two adjacent spaces of another color) and those without, which feature a mushroom space, another distinct terrain color, and two adjacent spaces of a third color. In the center of each tile lies a nest, considered adjacent to all four of its terrain spaces. The tiles are double-sided—each side mirroring the other—allowing players to rotate and flip them freely before placing them in their grid. When placed, tiles must align edge-to-edge.

Next are the Creature Cards, which set the patterns or requirements needed to attract the garden’s most elusive inhabitants. They are divided into three distinct categories: leaf creatures, puddle creatures, and mushroom creatures. By fulfilling the pattern or condition shown on an active card after placing a tile, a player claims the corresponding creature token and places it in their garden.

Finally, we have the Animal Tokens, categorized into three types: bees, hummingbirds, and creatures. These three types of beings represent the wildlife bringing the garden to life and form the core of endgame scoring. Bees are drawn to pollinated habitats, which form whenever three or more matching terrain spaces connect orthogonally (expanding an already pollinated habitat will not attract new bees); furthermore, their population increases if other habitats of that same color have already been pollinated. Hummingbirds arrive at tiles whose terrain spaces belong entirely to pollinated habitats, and up to three can stack on a single tile if consecutive 3-tile lines (rows or columns) harboring these birds are formed. Lastly, creatures appear by satisfying the requirements on their respective cards. At the end of the game, the player or players with the most tokens of each creature type gain two additional creature tokens of that type. Each token counts as one victory point.

That is enough to get started.

Preparación de la Partida

1. Deal one starting garden tile to each player. In games with fewer than four players, return any unused starting tiles to the box.
2. Randomly select one garden creature card of each type (leaf, puddle, and mushroom) and place them in the center of the table. Return the remaining cards to the box.
3. Place all matching creature tokens next to their corresponding card.
4. Form a nearby supply with the bee and hummingbird tokens.
5. Place all garden tiles into the cloth bag and mix them up.
6. Remove tiles from the bag and return them to the box based on player count: 24/12/0 tiles for 2/3/4 players.
7. Draw 3 tiles from the bag and display them in the center of the table to form the market.
8. Randomly select the starting player.

We are ready to begin!

Game Flow

A game of Under the Leaves plays out across 12 rounds. Each round, starting with the first player and proceeding clockwise, every player takes a turn.

On their turn, the active player must perform the following steps in order:

• Place a Garden Tile. The player selects one of the 3 available tiles in the display and adds it to their play area. The following placement rules apply:
  • Adjacency. The new tile must be placed so that at least one full edge aligns adjacent to a tile already in the garden.
  • Grid placement. Tiles must form a regular grid structure, meaning a single edge cannot split across two different tiles.
  • Orientation. Tiles are double-sided and may be freely flipped or rotated before final placement. Terrain colors do not need to match adjacent tiles.
• Possible Arrival of New Creatures. After placing the tile, the player checks if new terrain combinations attract creatures to their garden. Check in the following order:
  • Bees. If tile placement creates a new habitat of 3 or more orthogonally connected terrain spaces of the same color (a “pollinated habitat”), place a bee token on it. Additionally, the player receives one extra bee token for every other habitat of that same color they have previously pollinated in their garden.
  • Hummingbirds. A tile attracts a hummingbird (placing its token on the central nest) when all its terrain spaces belong to fully pollinated habitats. Furthermore, an extra hummingbird is earned if the tile forms a line (row or column) of 3 consecutive tiles that each host a hummingbird, placing the extra token on the middle tile of that line. Thus, a single tile can hold up to 3 hummingbirds (one base bird, plus two more if it sits at the intersection of a horizontal and vertical line of three hummingbirds each).
  • Garden Creatures. Check the specific conditions on the active creature cards selected for the game (Leaf, Puddle, and Mushroom).

Afterward, draw a new tile from the bag to refill the display, then pass the turn to the next player.

Game End

The game ends when the tile bag is empty and the display can no longer be refilled, which occurs after completing 12 rounds (each player will have built a grid of 13 tiles—the starting tile plus twelve drafted tiles). Final scoring then takes place, where each player scores:

• 1 Point per Bee in their garden
• 1 Point per Hummingbird in their garden
• 1 Point per Creature in their garden
• 2 Points per Creature Type if the player holds the majority for that type. In case of a tie, all tied players earn the bonus points.

The player with the highest total score wins. Ties are broken using the following criteria:

• The player with the most hummingbirds.
• The player with the most bees.

If still tied, victory is shared.

Personal Opinion

Well, here we are once again to talk about a new game built around the most ubiquitous mechanics trio of recent years: open drafting, tile placement, and pattern building. It is a winning recipe in the sense that it resembles a simple dish to cook, like a potato omelet.

Sure, things can go wrong—the dish might burn because your pan lost its non-stick coating, or you might end up with a bad egg, or perhaps the potatoes were not quite right. But generally speaking, a potato omelet is at least edible and leaves diners reasonably satisfied.

On the flip side, it is rare to encounter a potato omelet that causes sheer ecstasy, since people eat them fairly regularly throughout the year. It is hard to truly surprise anyone with one. Yet the possibility exists and shouldn’t be ruled out, especially if you enjoy a good omelet.

This time around, it is Under the Leaves‘ turn to step up to the table of this humble “food critic.” Brought to us by our Chilean friends at Fractal Games and published in Spain by Rocket Lemon Games, let’s see how its flavor turned out. But first, my thanks to the publisher for providing the review copy that makes this ramblings possible.

In Under the Leaves, each player attempts to construct an attractive garden to lure living creatures to settle within it. Inhabitants include small bees handling vital pollination duties, hummingbirds dancing among trees and flowers, and other creatures seeking habitats tailored to their needs.

Mechanically, as I mentioned earlier, we are looking at a game that blends drafting, tile placement, and pattern building. Drafting takes place from an open display of three square tiles, each featuring four sub-spaces arranged in two possible layouts. They either feature one pond space paired with three terrain spaces across two colors (two orthogonally connected spaces of one color and a third of another), or three distinct terrain types (similar to the first layout, but swapping the pond for a terrain space of a third color marked with a mushroom symbol).

After picking an available tile, a player adds it to their personal garden—which starts with a initial tile assigned during setup—aiming to create as many creature-attracting patterns as possible. Tiles can be flipped and rotated freely, but must be placed so that each tile edge aligns fully with neighboring edges.

As for the achievable patterns, we start with the simplest and arguably most critical one: bees. Whenever the active player forms a group of at least three orthogonally connected spaces of the same terrain type, that area counts as pollinated, placing a bee on one of those spaces.

It doesn’t end there: if the player already has other pollinated areas of that same terrain color, an extra bee token is placed on each of those previously pollinated groups. This means players scale their bee gains quadratically per terrain type. For a given terrain, the first pollinated group yields one bee, but a second group bumps the total to three bees (one on the new group plus one on the old), a third group brings it to six (one on the new group plus one on each of the prior two), and so on.

Hummingbirds, the second creature type, are directly tied to pollinated terrain groups. Whenever all four spaces on a tile belong to pollinated groups, a hummingbird arrives at that tile’s central nest. Additionally, whenever a line of three consecutive hummingbirds is formed (either in a row or column), an extra hummingbird lands on the middle tile of that line.

Lastly, we have the garden creatures, divided into leaf creatures, puddle creatures, and mushroom creatures. Each type requires a specific spatial pattern on dedicated spaces. Leaf creatures demand specific terrain configurations, puddle creatures focus on pond spaces, and mushroom creatures target mushroom-marked spaces. Unlike bees and hummingbirds, these patterns vary from game to game, depending on cards that set the active criteria for luring each creature type.

The game lasts exactly twelve rounds, ensuring every player enters final scoring with a 13-tile grid (their starting tile plus the twelve drafted across their turns). Final scoring simply tallies the total creatures residing in your garden, with a minor majority-scoring tweak for the three garden creature types—granting two bonus creatures of that type to the player(s) holding the most.

And that’s really all there is to it. As you can see, Under the Leaves is relatively straightforward in concept. On your turn, you draft a tile, place it into your play area, and try to attract as many creatures as possible by matching one or several required patterns.

At this point, many of you are likely thinking of Cascadia (check out its tocho-review here), and the similarities are certainly striking. In fact, as I see it, Under the Leaves is essentially Cascadia in reverse. The core difference lies in the draft: in Randy Flynn’s hit design, players add both a tile and a wildlife token to their tableau, aiming to place the animal token where its pattern scores best. In Under the Leaves, players build patterns on the grid specifically to attract animal tokens to them.

It’s a subtle shift, but one with a massive design impact. First, luck is reduced considerably. Tile configurations here are relatively predictable since every tile offers two connected spaces of a single terrain, meaning pollinating a new group usually just requires having one or two matching open spaces ready to connect.

In Cascadia, beyond having hexagonal tiles with far more varied arrangements, you also had to deal with paired wildlife tokens. This added friction to the draft, as the animal you wanted rarely came paired with the tile you needed—which could be frustrating if you lacked nature tokens to break up the draft pairs.

Second, endgame scoring in Under the Leaves is refreshingly simple. You just count up the physical tokens present in your garden and you’re done. There are no complex spatial patterns to parse during end-game math, even if those patterns require constant evaluation during play. Fortunately, evaluating patterns mid-game can easily be done cooperatively, with tablemates pointing out whenever a token should be added.

Third, this pattern mechanism allows for more controlled player interaction. Beyond drafting—which functions similarly in both games—interaction hinges on majorities. While Cascadia awards majorities for largest contiguous habitat spaces, Under the Leaves tracks majorities for creature counts. This offers more player agency, as players can actively compete without feeling blocked by bad tile pulls from the draft pool.

Moving on to production components, the quality is quite solid. Cardboard tiles are thick and sturdy, cards have decent stock with good spring and smooth finish (sleeving isn’t required since cards aren’t held in hand), and the custom wooden creature tokens are charmingly shaped. The rulebook is clear, well-structured, and easy to follow.

Art-wise, Paulina Victoria’s work is delightful. The cover art is vibrant and appealing, while the overall table presence is visually harmonious once all the colorful wooden tokens cover your garden grid. Great work overall.

And let’s wrap this up. Under the Leaves is a design that, despite relying on well-trodden mechanics, feels fresh and elegant. The interplay between exponential bee pollination and precise hummingbird line placement creates a dynamic puzzle where every decision carries genuine weight. Far from a cozy stroll, the game punishes poor planning and rewards tight spatial efficiency, making pattern fulfillment feel organic, tense, and rewarding. Though its square grid layout might seem like a simpler spatial challenge on the surface, the depth emerging from majority tactical fights and turn optimization delivers a vibrant experience. If you enjoy this genre of games, this is a title you shouldn’t pass up. For all these reasons, I give it a…