When I first saw the trailer Garden Story, It reminded me of one of my favorite Game Boy Advance games from my childhood. As a kid, I wasn’t given a lot of money, so I would go to the GameStop demo stand and play there. The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap for hours and hours. I wanted History of the garden be like the forest adventures I had then. He kept that promise and offered much more.
History of the garden is an action game in which you play as a grape named Concord and solve 2D puzzles. It doesn’t take much effort to explain why some residents were frogs, some were fruits and some were mushrooms. They all lived in the Grove and cared for each other in their own way, mostly because they were threatened by the monsters affiliated with the Rot.
I loved the whimsical whimsical music, the unique interface, and the way the lawn would part slightly when Concord stepped in. Concord is the chosen guardian, but the villagers treat them with kindness, as if they were a child. Most of the community has a lot of care and attention.
Despite this, History of the garden is affected by the same problem as other independent action games. The game is based on experimentation rather than a proper tutorial introduction. It took me three days to learn how to heal and five days to learn how to open the mailbox (the attacks with a gun). This is great if you don’t want the games to control your mechanics, but I’m a very impatient player. I just want them to tell me that hammers are capable of clearing debris so they can be on the right track.
I don’t have time to make a thousand mistakes until I have the right answer. Once, I saw some tasks on the bulletin board that might have been a little painful. I didn’t want to go looking for Rot monsters. I wanted to get to the next segment of my heroic adventure. So I just gave up and went to sleep. He was not prepared for what was about to happen.
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My daily summary told me that not defeating enemies meant that the villagers were too afraid to work and that the cracks in the apartments were more severe. I was horrified. The community relied on me to accomplish these tasks and their fragile lives got worse because I decided to call them. The game didn’t tell me explicitly about having made bad decisions. However, History of the garden it is based on the player’s own sense of social responsibility. It seems like a creative gamble to me, as there isn’t really much that keeps me from ignoring all of my tasks once I get to the next content section of the story. What if I was forced to complete all the tasks? Then I might have started to feel resentment towards the Grove. Instead, I was given the opportunity to decide if the to-do list was worth it.
Once I advanced the main plot, I was amazed at how difficult the first boss was. Again, some guidelines would probably have helped if History of the garden I had pointed out his mode of invincibility (which I recommend), but I found out about it after I died with Bookworm about four times. Once I conquered their head and freed them from their treasure, I was immediately rewarded with access to the beautiful summer-themed village. It was so beautiful that I had almost missed the fact that the spring interface had also changed to match the summer beach.
Garden Story’s the images are so reflective but organic. It doesn’t draw attention to its best parts. The game is content to allow the player to find all the secrets. It was a complete accident that I discovered the open and closed pink flowers being hit. Again: great for scouts and not so great for players who want to learn how to perform basic gameplay actions right away.
I also got lost in a lot. I’m usually very attentive to what the background characters say, as I think I can always get a summary in a mission log. Not inside History of the garden. Their records are bare bones and their search markers non-existent. If I tune in to an important character, I have to look for them without any meaning on the map. Or if they explain how to collect glass fragments, I move quickly through their explanations for my own danger. There are no guides or encyclopedias in the Grove. There is only life experience and listening to your elders.
History of the garden it’s a beautiful pixel adventure that feels good and plays well. It’s also a fantasy where community well-being doesn’t exist regardless of the player’s attempts to minimize Concord stats as quickly as possible. It still gives you the opportunity to be the prodigal son, but it will never allow you exclusively of the consequences of doing so. Which probably means I’ll play History of the garden for much, much longer than I expected.