Viticulture World – Is Growing Grapes and Making Wine Better with Friends?

This is not a one-way-to-win experience, but rather one that requires some thought and planning, but with multiple victory paths. When Jamey reached out and asked who would want to review the cooperative version of the game, I was instantly excited and put my name forward. Fast forward a few months, and here we are taking a look at Viticulture World, the cooperative expansion.

So how different is Viticulture World compared to the original base game? Substantially, actually. The entire experience feels very different and unique, and while you are still growing grapes, harvesting them, and producing wine, you are now doing so as a partnership, which changes how you might approach the situation. Still, it’s worth checking out this “How to Play” video from Rodney Smith as we won’t be going over all the rules here:

So let’s discuss what’s really important – is this game worth it if you love original, competitive version? Yes and no, and that really depends on how you like to play games. As I said before, I love Viticulture, and I won’t bury the lead: between the original competitive version and this cooperative version, I’m probably deferring to the original almost every time. That being said, with a ton of different scenarios to choose from – themed by continents – you can slowly play this game over months, or even years. In our short few months with the game, we played through 3 of the scenarios, successful in completing two and losing badly at one.

The thing about this game is that you cannot really play with a newbie to games, as you will be constantly playing for them. This cooperative version is well thought out, and works really well. But it is deep, and it requires cooperative strategy unlike other games I’ve played. Ultimately, we found that to be really successful in any of the given scenarios, we had to really plan out each and every season prior to actually doing things. And even with a group of experienced players, this game can be really tough. It does scale fairly well, but there are a few things that can make and break your game, and that can be completely random.

There are a number of random upgrades you can access each and every game, and depending on how those upgrades roll out depends on how you might progress during the game. Some things, like upgrading workers for cheaper, are much more beneficial early on, and less beneficial later. We had a situation where many of us spent time upgrading our workers, only to have that upgrade flip later on and be much less useful than it could have been. There are other random improvements like this one that make a huge, positive difference in the game if you get it at the right time.

Still, even when we lost, the experience was enjoyable, albeit long. This is a one game-per-night experience, so don’t expect to play other games that evening. This can take a long time, and from time-to-time, players might have to sit there for quite a long time thinking about how to play out their turn. Plus, the game begins with ALL your workers, which makes this longer than standard Viticulture.

So is this an expansion? I’d argue no, and that you should treat this as a standalone experience that uses pieces from the original Viticulture game. For fans of Viticulture AND cooperative games, this is a must own. If you are on the fence about cooperative games, and you don’t like super long experiences, this is probably one to pass on!