There are several words I wish I could say about this game. Many of which I will unfortunately be unable to say without threat of legal action, but I shall try my best.
Speaking from my own experience as a hobbyist and aspiring game developer, Garten of Banban feels much like the kind of projects you throw together when you're just getting your feet wet with a new engine, style, or just game development in general. The kind of unpolished, unoptimized mess of various mechanics jammed into each other that you know isn't anywhere close to a finished product, but still feel proud of just on the basis of getting it working at all. The kind that will never see the light of day, aside from maybe a few friends you send it to being like "Check this out, first time doing this, can't believe it actually works.", knowing full well future attempts will start from scratch now that you know what you're doing. And yet, here it is, published, with a merch link on the main menu.
I was fortunate, having the foresight to enlist a dear friend who shares whatever deep-rooted trauma or mental illness draws me to this style of game. Were it not for their company, I likely would have been driven to my breaking point, and for that, I am thankful. I don't often outwardly express frustration in a non-joking manner, so the fact that I let out an involuntary cry of pure rage at one point goes to show this game's ability to get into your head. In a way, it's almost impressive, given the length and quality.
Graphically, this game looks worse than one made in Roblox. And I'm not talking about the Roblox of today, where there's somehow actual money behind the experiences, I mean the Roblox my elderly, 23-year-old self played as a preteen, where a diagonal cylinder seemed like a greater feat of computer engineering than landing man on the moon.
Short aside, cylinder is such an odd word. It's one of the few words in English where it's spelled almost exactly how it's pronounced, and yet I can never get it right because I'm not used to that being the case.
Anyway, back on topic, almost everything in this game is made up of single color 3D shapes occasionally textured; the visual equivalent of plain, slightly-undercooked pasta, which really begs the question: why does this game run so poorly? I admittedly am rocking a decently old ThinkPad from 2018, but even still, I manage to run games with significantly more graphical and computational demands than this realistically should have. For god's sake, I got through decently modded Skyrim on this ol' boy with more consistent performance. I'd love to say I know the answer, but alas, I have not yet managed to use Blender for more than 20 minutes without getting so frustrated I remove it from my computer, so I cannot speak on the intricacies of 3D graphics.
Now, onto the story.
Now, onto the gameplay. Not great, I gotta say. As I was sorta saying above, it's just a bunch of mechanics thrown together. Due to how short the game is, each new, unrelated mechanic is only really used the one time and never again, barring the "press button with drone" or "press button on wall with correct key in possession." The one time you're introduced to a new gameplay mechanic that builds off an existing one, it is only used for the single "silent tutorial" type introduction puzzle and then never again, it's genuinely hilarious.
During the horror chase sequence, I almost lost my mind. You're forced to run along a snaking platform slowly extending from the wall, and the combination of the slippery movement, single-digit framerate and just my general overreation to the idea of being chased led to me dying over and over and over just from falling off the goddamn platform. Thankfully, it seems the devs learned from their mistake, as they implement invisible barriers later in the same sequence to prevent you from accidentally succeeding in a way they didn't intend, i.e. running straight for the exit instead of pressing a random button on the wall first. A button which is next to a near-identical button that does nothing, that I definitely didn't spend too long mashing before realizing my mistake and getting caught, no sirree.
Why am I doing this, why am I writing this? What compelled me to spend more time than it took playing the actual game writing this review? I don't know. I really don't. I had a miserable time playing this, which really begs the question: Why am I going to play the sequel? Who can say.
Speaking from my own experience as a hobbyist and aspiring game developer, Garten of Banban feels much like the kind of projects you throw together when you're just getting your feet wet with a new engine, style, or just game development in general. The kind of unpolished, unoptimized mess of various mechanics jammed into each other that you know isn't anywhere close to a finished product, but still feel proud of just on the basis of getting it working at all. The kind that will never see the light of day, aside from maybe a few friends you send it to being like "Check this out, first time doing this, can't believe it actually works.", knowing full well future attempts will start from scratch now that you know what you're doing. And yet, here it is, published, with a merch link on the main menu.
I was fortunate, having the foresight to enlist a dear friend who shares whatever deep-rooted trauma or mental illness draws me to this style of game. Were it not for their company, I likely would have been driven to my breaking point, and for that, I am thankful. I don't often outwardly express frustration in a non-joking manner, so the fact that I let out an involuntary cry of pure rage at one point goes to show this game's ability to get into your head. In a way, it's almost impressive, given the length and quality.
Graphically, this game looks worse than one made in Roblox. And I'm not talking about the Roblox of today, where there's somehow actual money behind the experiences, I mean the Roblox my elderly, 23-year-old self played as a preteen, where a diagonal cylinder seemed like a greater feat of computer engineering than landing man on the moon.
Short aside, cylinder is such an odd word. It's one of the few words in English where it's spelled almost exactly how it's pronounced, and yet I can never get it right because I'm not used to that being the case.
Anyway, back on topic, almost everything in this game is made up of single color 3D shapes occasionally textured; the visual equivalent of plain, slightly-undercooked pasta, which really begs the question: why does this game run so poorly? I admittedly am rocking a decently old ThinkPad from 2018, but even still, I manage to run games with significantly more graphical and computational demands than this realistically should have. For god's sake, I got through decently modded Skyrim on this ol' boy with more consistent performance. I'd love to say I know the answer, but alas, I have not yet managed to use Blender for more than 20 minutes without getting so frustrated I remove it from my computer, so I cannot speak on the intricacies of 3D graphics.
Now, onto the story.
Now, onto the gameplay. Not great, I gotta say. As I was sorta saying above, it's just a bunch of mechanics thrown together. Due to how short the game is, each new, unrelated mechanic is only really used the one time and never again, barring the "press button with drone" or "press button on wall with correct key in possession." The one time you're introduced to a new gameplay mechanic that builds off an existing one, it is only used for the single "silent tutorial" type introduction puzzle and then never again, it's genuinely hilarious.
During the horror chase sequence, I almost lost my mind. You're forced to run along a snaking platform slowly extending from the wall, and the combination of the slippery movement, single-digit framerate and just my general overreation to the idea of being chased led to me dying over and over and over just from falling off the goddamn platform. Thankfully, it seems the devs learned from their mistake, as they implement invisible barriers later in the same sequence to prevent you from accidentally succeeding in a way they didn't intend, i.e. running straight for the exit instead of pressing a random button on the wall first. A button which is next to a near-identical button that does nothing, that I definitely didn't spend too long mashing before realizing my mistake and getting caught, no sirree.
Why am I doing this, why am I writing this? What compelled me to spend more time than it took playing the actual game writing this review? I don't know. I really don't. I had a miserable time playing this, which really begs the question: Why am I going to play the sequel? Who can say.
ASwitchDog
9 months ago