Town building through doing tasks on a bulletin board.

Garden Story starts with you taking care of a farm, but quickly makes you the guardian of a small town that needs help, a lot of help. Each day two or three tasks get put on the bulletin board, and players are expected to help out around town which will help level up the town and progress the story. The quests are procedurally generated, so you’ll often get the same ones, such as asking to repair a bridge you already fixed twice.

Garden Story does have a story that seems interesting, but there’s a lot of busy work and resource gathering that’s going to be required before you can make progress on the narrative. The biggest thing that holds Garden Story back is several annoying UI issues and front-loading a lot of slow unskippable conversations.

Pick this up if you want to do more of the random quests from Stardew Valley, than the farming. Some of the gameplay is good here, but Garden Story comes off as more of an OK experience than a fun adventure. The art though is pretty good.

If you want to see more from me: Check out my video on this month of Game Pass games: https://youtu.be/2fKlHHe39kE

This is such a cute looking game with beautiful art and adorable characters - I really wanted to like it, but ultimately it wasn't for me. There are daily tasks to upgrade the villages, but they got very repetitive after a few hours. There is a day-night cycle that is so short that I was always running and hurrying to get anything done on time. Sometimes you get locked into a region until you've completed certain quest lines, preventing me from going wherever I wanted whenever I wanted. There is also limited inventory and storage space, and I got tired of managing my items.

There is a museum to fill up with all existing items in exchange for lore and there are fun stories and places to discover, but unfortunately that wasn't enough to keep me going.

Garden Story does have a lot going for it. Its got charming music, whimsical visuals and a generally fun gameplay loop of foraging and clearing tasks in between main dungeons.

Its problem that its just a little too flimsy with the content that it should have focused on. The dungeons are too small and generally can be whizzed through far too easy... That and theres really only 3/4 total to run through.

And while the loop of resource collecting and task-clearing can be fun at the start, it quickly spreads itself out too thin where you'll often be just grinding to get anywhere, causing a rather short game to be artificially lengthened beyond what it should have been.

It all leads to a game that is charming enough to play through, its one that'll leave you feeling with a bit of a 'Is that it?' shortchanged-ness as the grindy buildup made you expect a little bit more than what was actually provided.

Very lovely little game. The graphics/characters/music all work flawlessly together to make a very cozy and lush world to romp around in. At first the gameplay loop and controls felt a little clunky, but as I unlocked more upgrades and parts of the towns everything started to click into place and became a lot more enjoyable as it went on. There are a couple aspects that leave a bit more to be desired, especially the barebones non essential npc dialogue and lack of diverse chores. This game felt a bit longer than it actually was, but I mean that in a good way. Loved getting to know each of the towns and remember the layouts.

un juego superdivertido y supercuco con un historia muy tierna y un mensaje emotivo sobre el ciclo de la vida que no esperaba. ha sido bastante entretenido de jugar, gracias a que se pueden echar partidas muy cortas y ligeras, aunque el diálogo es bastante más denso léxicamente de lo que te esperarías en un primer momento (le vendría genial tener una traducción al español). muy buena personalización, elenco de personajes bastante memorable, combate variado y divertido, lore chulo (aunque accesible mayormente mediante coleccionismo) y un apartado artístico de pixelart precioso y monísimo.

no quita que haya varias cosas mejorables: textos con fuente muy pequeña, cuadros de diálogo que apartan tu atención de los propios personajes por situarse en las esquinas, un inicio algo lento que no te permite guardar al instante, un diseño de mapas a ratos confuso por no diferenciar bien las cotas de nivel y sus colores, e introducción de elementos clave del gameplay en estadios algo avanzados de la partida (agricultura y arquitectura).

en resumen: un juego muy majo y entretenido que junta la aventura, el combate y la exploración propias de un Zelda de GBA con la parte más light de agricultura, personalización y peticiones de tus vecinos propia de Animal Crossing. recomendable y recomendado :3

Its deeply saddening that a game with such a delightfully cozy atmosphere, tender writing and soft, delicate sountrack is also an incredibly lacking, barren experience. Gameplay feigns complexity with multiple mechanics and elements, but its lack of depth in all departments is quickly apparent: with little enemy variety, basic enemy attack patterns and sluggish animations combat is boring, puzzles are rarely complex enough to be satisfying, side-quests are too simplistic and customization elements so constrained they feel pointless.

This game is fine. There's not much which I absolutely loved and a few things annoyed me a bit. I'd say I enjoyed playing garden story, although I'm just the precise amount of lukewarm on it that this review is ending up surprisingly hard to write.

I can certainly vibe with being a grape, in fact the greenling characters are refreshing in general. The presentation is quite pleasant. I like the soundtrack, although there's nothing memorable within it. Similarly I like the visuals, although there's not much memorable beauty that stands out to me. The vibes probably carry the game away from being bad.

The gameplay is a bit weak, but it was mostly serviceable for the experience. I like the focus on being a helper to the community instead of the standard adventure game hero who forgets every place they leave. There's some satisfying progression, although some of it is a bit tedious. This game serves you one of the staple video game experiences: the fantasy of helping out to fix the world and growing in power.

My favorite part of this game is the perk system. Your character connects with the experiences of previous guardians, and can slot any unlocked ones into a limited capacity of active memories. I love the thematic essence of this system and I think it's design works excellently for the game. It's neat how all at once the game encourages some minor side objectives, strengthens the world, gives you some build choices and an exciting thing to be rewarded with.

Speaking of the world, I like it. It has an interesting identity, although there's nothing about the world that jumped out to me as incredibly fascinating. This is probably the strongest aspect that makes the game work for me. I like how there's different towns you focus on instead of spending the whole game in one.

The town requests are incredibly tedious. Imagine the notice board in stardew valley, but it's tied to the progression of the community and your character. If you want tool upgrades I hope you enjoy wasting your time. At some level this system works for the experience the game is going for, but at some point in the playthrough I simply snapped and just grew sick of them.

The combat is bad. It doesn't feel good and doesn't present any meaningful challenge. You have a dodge roll, which is a nice bare minimum for a game, but you barely need it. The slime enemy you fight most often is a bit annoying. The dungeons are bad. The puzzles are slow and uninteresting.

I hope you like going through these waste of time dungeons multiple times... tool upgrades and some community requests will require materials that can only be gotten from them. Shoutout to the absurd amount of driftwood that the game demands from you... even though you can only get like 4-6 per run of a boring lil dungeon. Shoutout to the 2 incredibly minor shortcuts that would save you at most a few seconds of your life in total... which requires you to rerun a dungeon to unlock them. Shoutout to the combat request that asks you to fight stuff in a dungeon that you can't voluntarily leave. Shoutout to the incredibly slow and tedious block pushing puzzles in that one dungeon, they really shined the 3rd time.

The building mechanic feels pretty pointless. Why can you only build in certain locations. Why is there so little meaningful things you can build. Either this system should have been cut, or the game should have been strongly designed around it.

There's top-down sliding ice physics implemented in one of the areas, but no ice puzzles. How could you do this to me 😦

I like the healing system of this game. It's the standard flask/charges of healing, except you acquire flasks each with different properties and can fill them with healing juice that itself has different properties. It's pretty neat!

You play as Concord, a small grape fresh from the Kindergarden who has just been recruited to be the new guardian of The Grove. Rot is overtaking everything, the different towns are isolated from each other, and the current guardian just took off. Now, it's up to Concord to grow up, toughen up, and save their home!

Visuals

Garden Story is done in adorable pixel art with a nice pastel palette. It's lots of greens and purples and browns, which makes sense for being set in a garden and starring a grape. All of the NPCs are little fruits and veggies as well, and are super cute. There are also some adorable frogs, and other species in the other towns.

Sound Effects + Music

Some of the background music in Garden Story reminds me a lot of the Atelier games. It's cute and upbeat, but it is repetitive. Some locations have their own unique track, but it'll always be that one song every time you go there. Overall, the music is fine.

There's a good variety of sound effects, but again, they're very repetitive since you do the same tasks over and over. There's one sound that sounds suspiciously like the coins from Super Mario Bros...

Gameplay + Controls

Garden Story is an action RPG, so Concord spends a lot of time running around the map and fighting enemies. Combat did feel a little weird in the beginning. Concord can only make two hits at a time before waiting for their energy to replenish. It doesn't take long at all, but it does make fighting slow. I guess it keeps you from just mashing X like I want to do. Concord does get upgraded stamina, but very slowly.

Concord also picks up requests everyday from the village bulletin board. These will be things like killing a certain number of enemies, collecting a resource, or doing something else around town. You'll want to complete all of them each day to level up. In addition to those, there are the main story quests which will be listed on the map with a marker showing you where to go.

There's a lot of side content, but I didn't bother with most of it, which is unusual for me. In addition to saving the grove from the rot, Concord can help rebuild and upgrade all four towns. Some building projects are required as part of the story, but the majority of it can be taken at your own pace. You can easily see where these projects go once you unlock that aspect of the game.

Replayability

Garden Story isn't a game that I'd want to replay. The beginning is way too slow for me to want to slog through it again. It's also super linear, so there's not much else to make a replaying enticing. Unless you want all of the achievements, which isn't something that's important to me.

Overall

I liked Garden Story. It took me awhile to get into, but it eventually grabbed my attention enough to have me finish it. I wish I liked it more, because it is super cute.

Gioco decisamente buono e ricco di personalità e cose da fare. Un peccato le boss fight finali: a un certo punto, verso la conclusione, si dovranno riaffrontare tutti i boss ormai sconfitti ma la boss fight rimane pressoché identica. Cambia la maggior quantità di minion evocati da ciascuno dei boss e l'arena, ma nulla che spinga a combattere in modo differente (anche perché, per quanto le boss fight abbiano un design interessante, non rappresentano nulla di effettivamente impegnativo per il giocatore). La boss finale poi ha la pecca di concedere al giocatore un vero e proprio punto sicuro: posizionandosi in una certa zona dell'arena, si rimarrà quasi sempre al sicuro dagli attacchi del boss (non che si possa fare altrimenti, il boss evoca dei rovi che ricoprono l'intera arena in continuazione fatta eccezione per un'unica piazzola) rendendo la boss fight sin da subito banale nonostante anche questa tenti di proporre un approccio diverso

I really wanted to love this game. I first played a demo at Portland Retro Gaming Expo a few years back. It's by a local studio whose past work I enjoy. But this didn't do it for me.

I have to start with: OMG the pixel art is incredible, the art direction and execution is beyond gorgeous, this is one of my favorite looking games on Switch.

Unfortunately, the gameplay and pacing were too much for me.

The game takes what feels like an eternity to get going. I wonder if they were worried people wouldn't understand the game. Because they could've made the game easier to understand by putting more information in the menus. Instead, you're forced to remember what NPCs say, and go back to your house to check a bulletin board in order to remember what quests you have. Then you have to cross-reference those quests with a map, which doesn't mark the locations. So you have to read all the location names on hover to figure out where to go.

To be fair, I think these might have been optional quests? I'm still not 100% sure what the point of those are.

The main story quests were kinda similar, but at least were listed in the menu screen.

The combat is bewilderingly like Dark Souls. I expected "Harvest Moon meets Zelda" but it's more like a clunkier 2D Dark Souls. Damn near every action consumes gobs of stamina. You can run, roll, swing your sword, and block. It all feels strangely slow and lumbering for a little 2D grape. Also, if you die (surprisingly easy since you have little HP, and your potions take time to drink), you get sent back home and lose a percentage of your money, and the day advances to the next one. To make matters worse, sleeping does not refill your potions (did I mention that potions work basically exactly like estus flasks in Dark Souls? Slow and lumbering, and don't heal much).

I did the first dungeon, which is apparently randomized. It was literally completely linear, and I did it 3 times before I beat the boss. The puzzles were... fine. I can't help but wonder why they thought a game that looks like Harvest Moon + Zelda should play like Dark Souls meets roguelite.

Also, the daily bonus quests are randomized, but from a small pool. I quickly found myself doing the same bonus quests multiple times, and still not being sure what the point of doing them was besides a bit of money I didn't have much use for.

I made it to the 2nd town, which was a cute beach area. The level up system is unique, but not especially balanced. There were very obvious best picks. I'll give them credit that re-spec'ing is 100% free, unlike most games.

Ultimately, the NPCs had pages of dialog I wasn't in the mood for, and the gameplay loop was slow and uninteresting to me.

I really wanted to like this game! At least the frog and the grape are cute.

Jogado no Xbox Game Pass. É muito fácil ver o carinho e a dedicação colocados em Garden Story: o visual fofo é lindo, a história é bem bonita, as mecânicas são até que interessantes e o jogo tem um charme muito gostosinho.

Mas a estrutura de tentar alongar a experiência sem ter o conteúdo necessário matou o jogo pra mim. Altamente repetitivo, eu me via por horas fazendo exatamente as mesmas coisas até que o jogo me deixasse avançar na história. Parecia um clicker mais burocrático que me forçava andar pelos mesmos mapas 5 vezes a cada 10 minutos. Uma pena.

I want to like it, there's something here. But it's just so BORING. Every action takes 3 seconds of waiting to perform. EVERY action. Swinging the sword is sluggish and feels weightless, somehow both at the same time. The daily quests are boring and often repeat, sometimes back to back. I couldn't play long enough to really sink my teeth into the story, because I really couldn't play the game any longer. (For those who are curious, I just got the tool box.) The art quality, music, designs, and concept are all solid, but by mixing an action game with a very slow premise, they are leaving every single ACTION you can perform high and dry.

Garden Story is charming and adorable in its look, but stale and boring in its feel. The stamina-based combat feels sluggish with attacks doing chip damage and taking multiple stamina cycles to defeat single enemies. This improves as the stamina bar increases, but is never entirely rectified. The loop of completing errands is interesting at first, but repetitive by the end of the game, especially with repeated errands and the resource grinding necessary. Farming elements are barebones, every character talks for way, way too long, and the dungeons are too short to feel memorable. I wanted to enjoy this game, but found it mostly boring instead.

Pegue Stardew Valley e tire a parte da fazenda. O que sobra? Lutar, coletar, fazer missões/pedidos, pescar... Bem, isso é Garden Story. Um jogo que poderia ser bem agradável, se não sofresse por uma lentidão de gameplay terrível.

Em Garden Story você é colocado no corpo de Concord, uma pequena uvinha em treinamento para se tornar um Guardião (função essa que, sendo sincero, não passa de um gigantesco faz-tudo), em um mundo assolado por uma condição chamada 'Podridão', que faz com que várias criaturas hostis apareçam e causem estragos por aí.
Quanto a parte artística, nenhuma reclamação - Pixelart simpática e SoundTrack tranquila, combinantes com o estilo mais calmo e fofo do jogo. Quanto a gameplay, o jogo se resume a: acordar todo dia e fazer pedidos e missões das vilas do jogo (que envolvem consertar coisas, entregar materiais, pescar, matar inimigos, etc), enquanto que buscando prosseguir na missão principal do jogo que é entender e eliminar a Podridão. O problema, que é percebido logo no começo, é a lentidão do jogo em absolutamente tudo - desde os vários trechos desnecessariamente longos de diálogos obrigatórios (muitas vezes banais) à lentidão de caminhada e pouca estamina de Concord (que tornam a exploração e lutas mais lentas do que deveriam). O jogo possui uma sistema de evolução de Stats, o que inclui a quantidade de estamina e velocidade do jogador, mas demora muito tempo para evoluir elas a um nível aceitável (e a velocidade de movimento, mesmo evoluindo, não trás grandes melhoras), fazendo com que o começo do jogo seja muito demorado e, até mesmo, estressante.

Caso você goste de jogos mais calmos e relaxantes, sem se importar com a velocidade de progressão e gameplay, nesse caso Garder Story é uma opção bem válida, mas se este não for o seu caso, passe longe!

Shelved for now but my initial impression isn't that good - I expected a gardening game but this is more of a Zelda but with an annoying save mechanics.

Also I don't like it when a game presents itself by assaulting you with endless chatter within the first hour.

Get me to whatever the game is as fast as possible, talk to me later and keep it brief.

The aesthetics are a bit of a mess but they're also pretty and charming.

Maybe I'll give it a proper go some day.