About Ripples and Branches: A Solo Game of Haiku
Ripples and Branches is a solo game by Matt Hanna that turns an ordinary deck of cards into a poet’s walk. You have just arrived in a village and want to win over a patron of the arts. By playing cards against an inspiration pile you either collect ideas, which wait for you at the location matching their suit, or move on to the next place. Back in the village you hand over lines of poetry whose values add up to 5, 7 and 5 syllables.
It won Most Original Theme at the BoardGameGeek 2022 Solitaire Print and Play Contest and placed 7th overall. There is nothing to cut out. Face cards are patrons or fellow poets who ask for inspiration, jokers are friends who let you rearrange the deck, and a two-patron variant raises the challenge.
How to play in one minute
- Lay out the four 10s as the village, field, forest and stream, put your token on the village, draw a hand of five and reveal a face card as your first patron.
- Each turn play a card that is not the suit of the top card of the inspiration pile. Higher: take the top card and tuck it under the location of its suit. Lower: move one location clockwise. Equal: your choice.
- Arriving at a location, collect everything tucked under it into your notebook.
- Each time you reach the village you may deliver one line: notebook cards totalling 5 (first and third lines) or 7 (second line), including at least one card of the patron’s suit. Then draw back up to five.
- Deliver all three lines to win. If you need to draw and no number cards remain, interest in you has faded and you lose.
What’s in the PDF
- Rules v2 (6 pages, Letter, colour) with setup diagrams and a two-patron variant.
- A one-page player aid.
- Both are on the designer’s Google Drive, linked from the BGG thread.
In the PDF
- Rules v2 (6 pages)
- Player aid (1 page)
PoetryHaikuJapanVillageHand ManagementPick Up And DeliverSet CollectionStandard Deck