Harvest Hoppers – A Holiday in Greenbranch

As they whiz down the street on their bicycle, autumn vegetables bounce out the crate on the back. The restaurants and cafes of Greenbranch are making preparations and the festival of Evenfall is about to begin. The humble townsfolk have been looking forward to feasting for weeks. Now, it’s up to a small group of faithful farming frogs to get their produce delivered on time!

Welcome to the endearing world of Harvest Hoppers, where players compete to deliver produce across the town of Greenbranch. Each player controls a friendly Hoptop Courier who specializes in a specific type of vegetable and possesses unique abilities that guide their strategy. Delivering the most produce to a specific type of restaurant will yield great rewards, as will the Hoptops who can control more delivery areas than their friends. Turns out these frogs on bikes are competitive!

Harvest Hoppers is a recent release from Snowbright Studio. It plays in 30 to 60 minutes, can accommodate two to six players, and is perfect for ages eight and up.

Setup

Place the neighborhood boards next to each other such that all of the 3-Star Restaurants are in the center, and the Farms and 2-Star Restaurants are along the outside. There is a handy diagram in the rulebook to consult during setup, which scales with the number of players. Place barn standees on each Farm to help players easily identify them. Set all of the coins within easy reach.

Each player then selects a Hoptop Courier. They’ll take the associated vegetable tokens and player board (each player only delivers one type of vegetable during the game). Players put seven of the vegetables on scoring tracks on their board to track their progress. Then, they put the rest into three equal stacks of six. These stacks represent available produce they may deliver over the course of the festival. Finally, each player sets their Hoptop on one of the Farms.

Gameplay

The player who most recently rode a bicycle starts first. Each turn follows a cadence of movement and delivery. Players can Coast, (move one space and deliver), or they can Rush, (move two or three spaces and deliver). But watch out, players who Rush also have to discard one of their vegetables from their stack.

In either case, once a player delivers to a certain type of restaurant, such as a taco joint or a smoothie cafe, the player moves their marker one space forward on the matching row of their progress track. Players can also move and pass without making a delivery. But, if a player does this twice in a row, they must discard a vegetable from their stack.

Players must also observe a few delivery rules. They may not deliver more than once to a particular establishment anytime during the game. Finally, players may not deliver to a particular establishment once another player delivers to it during the current round.

There are also a few other rules related to 2-Star and 3-Star Restaurants. These take some clever play to get produce to them, however they do offer higher points on the progress track.

Once all the players finish their deliveries for the day, or they choose to pass, they end the round. They then move their Hoptops back to one of the Farms. Players now earn tips from the restaurants based on their performance (area control) in each neighborhood. Whoever has the most deliveries in a neighborhood earns a 5-Coin bonus. Whoever has the second-most deliveries earn a 3-Coin bonus. Players put coins on their Tip Jar on their player board and scored at the end of the game.

Game End

After three rounds of play, the game is over and the festival ends. Players now count up the total points on their progress track and add their Tip Jar earnings. The player with the most points wins! They earn the title of Star Courier and the admiration of the entire town!

Impressions

In the Box

Harvest Hoppers offers an attractive world and an attention to detail in the artwork and game pieces that is noticeable right from the start. The tokens and boards are all very well done, with plenty of standees and bits that delight. There’s even seven drawstring bags to hold veggies and Coins, a nice upgrade over the typical plastic bag fare. It’s all quite impressive and immediately captured my kids’ interest.

Meanwhile, I did need to read the rules several times to make sure I understood the flow correctly. This sorts itself out after a few rounds, but the youngest players might need a few extra explanations.

How it Feels

Turns go fast! You certainly have to think through your delivery route—such as whether or not you will Rush to reach the 2-Star and 3-Star Restaurants, or if you’ll take your time and try to hit a certain type of restaurant all over the various neighborhoods (I for one was all about the sandwich shops). The game has just enough choice to keep adults engaged, and it’s quick enough to keep the kiddos from getting bored.

Since there are quite a lot of bits to organize and manage, it’s the kind of game where you might consider playing it twice before putting it away. There’s also several variants in the back of the rulebook to try out. Each Hoptop Courier comes with several special abilities you can try too, (completely optional) which boosts the replay factor. I didn’t try “Chaos Mode” but it sounds like a ton of fun! For example, in Chaos Mode one of the player boards tells you to startle each player at least once during the game. There are other more straightforward modes as well, which help guide your strategy from game to game.

One of my teens enjoyed the game just as much as my 10-year-old, but I do get the impression the game is geared towards a younger audience. If you have a younger crew and your family enjoys farming and town themes, this is probably a great pick for you.

You can get your own copy of Harvest Hoppers directly from Snowbright Studios.

---

Snowbright Studios provided The Family Gamers with a promotional copy of Harvest Hoppers for this review.