Overall, if you’re looking for a charming, chill, and cute journey that can transport you into a fruitful world (pun intended), then Garden Story is worth checking out. Luckily, there are enough customizations and accessibility options to modify battles and make them much more manageable and enjoyable (thanks Picogram for this!). With some progression, you’re able to increase the meter, however, since the meter is linked with sprinting and fighting, I constantly found myself scurrying back and forth to take down larger enemies. Though the basis is similar to The Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past with its visuals and simple melee attacks, Garden Story has limits on itself by having a stamina meter.
The one source of frustration that sat with me was the battle mechanics. Zach Welhouse confirms this tough lil’ fruit won’t cry when he gets hurt he won’t even let out a little whine. Balancing these quests and the overarching story is a fun balancing act that hooked me once I was able to get everything going. Garden Story PAX West 2019 Impression Pixel artist Picogram and tunesmith Graham Nesbitt team up to create a world where you will believe a grape can be a hero. There’s also in-game daily challenges that can help build rapport with residents in various areas of the game and could help improve on other in-game events throughout. Planet Pain: Hyper-Conflict combines everything you didnt ask for: Pool, Bumper Cars, Arbitrary Mini-Games, and an over-saturated Space Genre.
Engage in grand interplanetary battles through this very serious and very cool planet simulator. Eventually, you’ll be able to fish, collect/buy/sell items, craft resources, and customize Concord with fun wearables. Planet Pain: Hyper-Conflict for the Personal Computer is a high-octane action party game fit for 2-4 players. Though the exact story progression is a bit ambiguous to follow, Garden Story encourages you to explore the areas and partake in other low-key activities in the meantime. Though I felt a bit bewildered by the pacing of the adventure and where exactly to focus my attention, I never felt so aimless where I couldn’t figure it out. Dip your toes into the Garden Story gentle Autumn Town demo and you’ll encounter village wards populated by anthropomorphized plants chatty tomatoes, encouraging elderberries, shopkeeping squashes and intertwined with themes of neighbourly care and crop harvests. The story continues to focus on the rot as the main antagonists, but also does an incredible job at weaving other stories from the large cast of characters that are met along the way. Quickly, things go awry and the rot begins to infiltrate and attack. Garden Story, developed by Picogram and published by Rose City Games, starts off very innocently where Concord is exploring the small area around him. The pixelated aesthetic, along with its moving story and score, gives a very cozy and enjoyable 12-15 hour venture. Just do it, have fun.Garden Story is a wholesome adventure where a grape called Concord, begrudgingly takes on the role as the Guardian of the Grove to protect the residents and defend from the mysterious rot. If you’re out on a quest and you discover something or decide you want to craft something, you don’t have to forfeit what you were going to do to do it. Grow with the town Complete daily requests to defend, restore, and improve the town. It creates a satisfying gameplay loop that moves at a comfortable pace. As the newest guardian of the Grove, it is your duty to rebuild the village and uncover the story of its hidden past. Then you can go to bed and start fresh the next day. Get one done in the morning and the next time you go from one screen to the next it’ll be afternoon. Unlike like Stardew Valley, where the timer never stops, or Animal Crossing, which operates in real-time, the time in Garden Story actually travels at a beautiful clip with a mechanic I absolutely adore. When you accomplish a task it’ll raise one of three stats for the island and develop the community, allowing you to do more things like purchase better weapons from the stores. There are quests you can do every day that help you earn money and raise the stats of each island. It’s up to you to take up arms and take the battle to it, defending your communities of fruit people, plant people, and frog people.Īs you slowly work to uncover the story of the islands, their history, and what exactly The Rot is, you continue to do odd jobs for the people of your town. As time goes on, you find out that there’s a dark force at work that’s not only threatening your island but several others as well.