There's always been something in the 'growing/nurturing/gardening' type of games that I feel like contain the essence of saving farming games from their evolutionary dead end as Harvest-Moon-clones. I don't know what that essence is, but the point I'm getting at is that I think there's a lot more artistic potential to the theme of 'farming' besides the idealized cozy fantasy (or hypnotic rote work) that 99% of farming-related games have, be it hyperrealistic simulators or a typical Harvest Moon-like.
Games Pixy Garden makes me think of are..
- Eyezmaze's flash games of The Grow series. Clicking on things in an order transforms things in a surprising way - like an abstraction of gardening
- Astronoka, a PS1 strategy game where you breed and grow seeds to create crops with better genetics to win contests
- Birthdays the beginning - a recent PC game where you grow biomes to evolve creatures
- The rice system in Sakuna (although I've never played it)
- Evolving Pokemon, Tamagotchi, etc...
- Collecting 'girl' in modern gacha games, evolving them for different graphics, etc.
My feelings on the aforementioned games are mixed, but they all get at the idea of 'growing' in a slightly different way.
Anyways, Pixy Garden has its own idea. This game boils down to a sort of 'game-ified' Fairy Art Book. By playing the game you can view Event CGs of the fairies, sort of like a gravure idol book or erogame. (Except there's no nudity here).
Growing your fairies involves placing objects in a 2.5D garden - if the fairies are close to an Earth-mana object, they'll gain Earth points. Gain enough points and you can evolve the fairy to the next Earth Fairy stage. There's some mystery to this at first but you figure out the pattern/point thresholds fairly quickly.
Each fairy has its own cute set of animations. The other goal of the game is to terraform planets. The game has this sort of spiritual worldview by which natural phenomenon can actually be explained by fairies - e.g. an eclipse or aurora borealis is caused by a certain fairy. Fairies have the spiritual power to manifest and talk to divine figures like water dragons or dead spirits. You learn these facts both by reading the lore entry on a fairy after you've evolved it once, and by seeing Events.
How do you see Events? Well, when you evolve a fairy enough you can dispatch it to a planet. Planets, like fairies, also have mana levels. Raise the mana level enough, and you can trigger an event for a fairy if they're dispatched there. E.g., if a planet hits enough of an Earth level and I send my Earth fairy there it might trigger its Eclipse event, and you get a suggestive CG of the fairy.
--
Well, that's the essence of the game. There's some light strategy as to building up your fairies and the planets, but it's very manageable. As far as simulations go this one is pretty minimal and maybe a little too slow, even! But it was certainly interesting to have a more 'organic' feeling growth system achieved by placing the mana objects around a garden, rather than, say, making choices from a menu in a Princess game. Really, the design space of what this game is going for is very small, but it achieves it in a dedicated way that's hard to dislike.
As a last note, I think this game is unabashedly horny for fairy girls. There's like... definitely at least 30+ fairy designs with multiple CGs in this game. I recommend this for fans of fairies.
As art designs go, the illustrations and sprite work are both excellent and unique. A really fun set of designs, I'll be buying the art book somehow! The illustrator is "Choco" : https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/people.php?id=116161
Watch footage here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsSqiB-YfcQ
Games Pixy Garden makes me think of are..
- Eyezmaze's flash games of The Grow series. Clicking on things in an order transforms things in a surprising way - like an abstraction of gardening
- Astronoka, a PS1 strategy game where you breed and grow seeds to create crops with better genetics to win contests
- Birthdays the beginning - a recent PC game where you grow biomes to evolve creatures
- The rice system in Sakuna (although I've never played it)
- Evolving Pokemon, Tamagotchi, etc...
- Collecting 'girl' in modern gacha games, evolving them for different graphics, etc.
My feelings on the aforementioned games are mixed, but they all get at the idea of 'growing' in a slightly different way.
Anyways, Pixy Garden has its own idea. This game boils down to a sort of 'game-ified' Fairy Art Book. By playing the game you can view Event CGs of the fairies, sort of like a gravure idol book or erogame. (Except there's no nudity here).
Growing your fairies involves placing objects in a 2.5D garden - if the fairies are close to an Earth-mana object, they'll gain Earth points. Gain enough points and you can evolve the fairy to the next Earth Fairy stage. There's some mystery to this at first but you figure out the pattern/point thresholds fairly quickly.
Each fairy has its own cute set of animations. The other goal of the game is to terraform planets. The game has this sort of spiritual worldview by which natural phenomenon can actually be explained by fairies - e.g. an eclipse or aurora borealis is caused by a certain fairy. Fairies have the spiritual power to manifest and talk to divine figures like water dragons or dead spirits. You learn these facts both by reading the lore entry on a fairy after you've evolved it once, and by seeing Events.
How do you see Events? Well, when you evolve a fairy enough you can dispatch it to a planet. Planets, like fairies, also have mana levels. Raise the mana level enough, and you can trigger an event for a fairy if they're dispatched there. E.g., if a planet hits enough of an Earth level and I send my Earth fairy there it might trigger its Eclipse event, and you get a suggestive CG of the fairy.
--
Well, that's the essence of the game. There's some light strategy as to building up your fairies and the planets, but it's very manageable. As far as simulations go this one is pretty minimal and maybe a little too slow, even! But it was certainly interesting to have a more 'organic' feeling growth system achieved by placing the mana objects around a garden, rather than, say, making choices from a menu in a Princess game. Really, the design space of what this game is going for is very small, but it achieves it in a dedicated way that's hard to dislike.
As a last note, I think this game is unabashedly horny for fairy girls. There's like... definitely at least 30+ fairy designs with multiple CGs in this game. I recommend this for fans of fairies.
As art designs go, the illustrations and sprite work are both excellent and unique. A really fun set of designs, I'll be buying the art book somehow! The illustrator is "Choco" : https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/people.php?id=116161
Watch footage here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsSqiB-YfcQ