Indie Game of the Week 407: Garden Story

I figure in a year that's shaping up to be as challenging as this one, Indies are going to be our best source of escapism: not only in the sense of having something else occupy our thoughts for a while, but also in how the more throwback types take us back to a simpler and more peaceful time (hey, as a Millennial, I feel my generation is uniquely qualified to say "things were better in my day") as well as offering cozy worlds with stress-minimal goals to achieve. Picogram's Garden Story fits into that space, occupying a gameplay model somewhere between a dyed-in-the-wool Zeldersatz such as Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion and a resource-gathering survival game like Forager. Aesthetically, Garden Party is right in that zone too with its squishy grape protagonist Concord—this is at least one Concord that's not going down easy—and his neighborhood Grove of sapient fruit and vegetable pals.

The story's deceptively straightforward: since time immemorial the Grove has been protected by its Guardians, usually chosen from the populace by other Guardians based on a certain vibe. However, the Grove's inexorable slow decline forced the Guardians to seek ever more desperate methods to stem the tide of "Rot"—a malignant force that regularly generates blob-like monsters in shadowy or remote places less taken care of—and in so doing abandoned the Grove to find salvation outside and have yet to be seen since. As Concord, the newest Guardian while also one of the precious few that remain, the player not only has to go around defeating the Rot wherever it might spawn but also help maintain the four local villages, each based around a season. To that end, you are given multiple randomly-generated tasks per day (the "radiant quests" of certain other busywork RPGs) while simultaneously progressing a main objective that will culminate in a short, linear dungeon excursion to "complete" that town and allow you to move onto the next. These tasks might involve culling the Rot, fetching materials for the townspeople, or fixing bridges and the like: they're usually pretty simple and invoke the sort of self-assigned maintenance tasks of a Stardew Valley or similar sim. They're also optional to an extent: I'm not sure what happens if you keep skipping out on them, but the rewards are usually worth it as you'll improve the town and add to the stocks of local vendors as well as unlocking other boons.

The game has a few neat ideas on top of that. The first, while the game's not strictly an RPG (no more so than a Zelda, at least) you gain stats after completing dungeons and by upgrading your gear enough to destroy these little globular plants holding power-ups that are scattered around everywhere on the overworld. In addition to those, you can also complete in-game achievements relating to weapon usage, combat milestones, or freely taking advantage of other gameplay mechanics and they'll unlock Guardian "memories"—those that belong to Concord directly, but also those of his missing predecessors—which provide helpful buffs at the cost of only being able to equip so many at a time (like the rest of your stats, new slots for these memories open up as you make progress). It's a cute way to implement what is basically a second wave of side-quests to pursue but they do what I've always admired achievements for, at least when they're working as intended: they teach you how to play the game more effectively, then reward you by making those techniques or features easier to use or more lucrative. An example would be using the running button while outside (something I'd regularly forget I have) and then handing you a buff that makes running around less draining on your stamina gauge.

Another cute feature that opens up the game and make it feel more like a crafting/survival sim is a toolbox mode where you can freely build and install structures, sometimes functional and sometimes merely decorative, in order to personalize the world a bit. The functional upgrades might include more convenient places to cash in rewards or access your storage (your rucksack has limited space, alas, but these storage units usually aren't too far away) while the decorative stuff could be put in your temporary digs or around population centers to make them feel more homey. They all require materials to build, of course, but by the time you've unlocked this system you're probably sitting on a giant stockpile regardless. I have been looking for ways to increase the item limits for those in storage—the game insists on only 15 of each type, which isn't as much as it sounds since some store purchases might need 10 of a certain item for a tool upgrade—but when you hit that late-game point where you have more materials than you know what to do with, having the option to build statues of yourself everywhere seems like a perfectly reasonable application of resources.

Like many games with survival elements, if one were to strip away the busywork you'd have a pretty svelte game here with only four towns and four dungeons to explore and a smattering of overworld screens you'll probably be revisiting many times as you complete the recurring townspeople requests and go scrounging up the materials needed for a new power-up or to fix some broken obstacle somewhere. Even so, between the amount of tasks to be getting on with at any given moment and its day/night cycle egging you on to be ever more efficient, Garden Story does a fine job of offering something that sits between a top-down farming sim and the more adventurous Zelda games many of those farming sims occasionally allow themselves to be. It's happy to move along at its own leisurely pace and invites its players to join in, should the mood strikes, and I'm not opposed to slowing down a bit to smell the roses (or plant some, as the case often is).

(Incidentally, and I didn't quite intend for this to happen, but as of writing Garden Story will be free from EGS next week if this review gave you the itch to buy a copy. Just a heads up.)

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Post-Playthrough Edit: Did kinda wear out its welcome towards the end there, endlessly performing the same handful of tasks so I could upgrade my gear one last time before the final boss rush, but that was an interesting way to end things if not quite one that made a whole lot of sense (don't they need the Grove place to live? I thought all the fruit people descended from it?). Still a cute little Zeldersatz with a naturalist angle and some degree of personalization over your surroundings, if repetitive to a degree that even the Stardews don't usually get to potentially owing to its smaller scope.