90%Mac

I got to be a friendly neighborhood fruit who does good work for the homies.

unfortunately the steam achievements didn't work for me, so that was a bummer

70%PC

Combat is ridiculously frustrating at the beginning when you can only swing twice.

No incentive to fully upgrade everything or build anything or fully upgrade the towns or unlock all the memories.

Controls are terrible if you aren't using a controller.

It's a cute game with a nice story and not terribly difficult.

75%Xbox One

nice

75%PC

Que puedo decir sobre un juego en el que eres una uvita, me ha gustado mucho, super cozy.
Esta entretenido y las peleas no son facilitas.
La historia es un poco rara y no ha cumplido con todas mis expectativas.
Aun así muy buen juego.

80%PC

Muy bueno

70%PC

A more well-rounded and complete springtime game compared to Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion. Perhaps too much of a spread in the various types of gameplay without meaningful goals implemented for some of them. Still, a fun game.

50%PC

muito chato e repetitivo

75%PC

Really cute and fun, sometimes gets annoying though, for example the 3rd boss fight

50%Nintendo Switch

There's a great video published recently by The Escapist about indie game identity. The video contends that there are more and more indie games that are content with leaning on trends of other popular indie games, and therefore lose a voice of their own. I think Garden Story is a good example of this. It borrows mechanics heavily from other games (Stardew Valley is the easiest to point to), yet never finds a way to make them coalesce properly. Coupled with an uninteresting story and world, and there is nothing to make it stand out from the pack.

60%PC

It's an okay-ish game with a lot of frustrating design decisions.

Switching weapons will lock your movement in the direction you were going until it's done.
You can move 360 degrees, but only face (and attack) one of four ways, and you cannot change the way you're facing while charging up an attack so you'll probably miss a lot of attacks because of that.
You cannot save unless you sleep, and you cannot sleep if you're not "tired", and for some events you have to wait until the next day. Therefore, you will be waiting for the day to pass so you can sleep more than once, which is just a waste of time.
I'm not a fan of the stamina system, it feels too restrictive for the type of game it is.
There's way too much pointless story and exposition, I think 25% of my playtime was spent on reading endless text boxes..
Some upgrades take insane amounts of resources (8 glass lenses and I maybe got one per day with all luck bonuses).
Most enemies give you a debuff, which hurts your speed and stamina (I think, it's never explained), which makes combat even more tedious.
I could go on about how the game gives you way too many weapons and items without a good way to quickly switch, or how the combat doesn't evolve after the first hour or so, but I think you get my point. The gameplay is quite weak.

But it has nice music and a cute artstyle, which carries the game quite a bit, just not enough to make it into a good game, just decent.

80%PC

It's like Death Stranding, Turnip Boy, and Secret of Mana had a baby.

Very good game. Not perfect, towards the end things got kind of formulaic and I just wanted to be done, but it's very good still.

30%PC

No parece ser un mal juego, pero no es para mi. Seguramente no lo he jugado con el mood adecuado, pero los textos en ingles se me hacian enrevesados y dificiles de seguir y me costaba por tanto entrar al trapo del juego. Seguramente en español lo habria disfrutado. Simplemente no me apetece.

50%PC

Played for about 3 minutes. On both gamepass versions the movement feels awful with the analog stick. It's locked at 30fps, your character slides to a stop, and you can only move in 8 directions. The steam version is probably better, but this version was clearly an afterthought, which is also made clear by the fullscreen & resolution settings being left in the Xbox version.

80%Nintendo Switch

Loved this game! It was a little slow in the start, but other than that it was really enjoyable! But don’t go in to playing this game thinking that it’ll be like Stardew Valley, because it isn’t, it’s different but still really fun.

70%Nintendo Switch

Saw this on a Nintendo Indie Direct and thought it looked quite charming and was interested in an adventure game along the style of Zelda with a village building mechanic and RPG elements built in. While it was fun for a while, this wasn't what I was expecting from th trailer. The village building is very minimal and has no real impact on the game besides being able to upgrade your various weapons and flasks but the game is also so easy that this isn't required for the most part. I stuck with the Parasol weapon after getting that and only upgraded the seaside village enough to upgrade this and nothing else and I didn't have any issues with any of the enemies including bosses. I did enjoy the Zelda-esque adventure style with a quest system progressing the story through the various areas of the world and the ending was satisfying enough. Had this been a full price game I might have been a bit disappointed but for an indie dev, and by the looks of the credits quite a small team, this is a pretty decent game and enjoyable throughout despite some slow points in the adventure.

80%Nintendo Switch

Garden Story is a cozy, charming, and addictive little adventure pulling from a wide range of influences; from its Zelda inspired overworld and combat mechanics, to the heartwarming life sim elements of Animal Crossing or Harvest Moon, all while carving out a identity all its own. Garden Story is a bursting with personality and warmth, and the delightfully detailed pixel art, adorable character sprites, and mellow tunes that propel you along your journey make for a refreshing way to unwind from the constant stress of our chaotic modern world.

Garden Story is a game that thrives on variety, and while its individual elements probably wouldn't be enough on their own to make for a very compelling game, it rarely asks you to work on anything for too long at a time, which saves it from repetition. You'll be helping out by fixing broken pipes or fighting monsters one minute, and gathering wood or minerals for the town library the next; how you choose to spend your day is entirely up to you, as well as the pace in which you set to do it.

The game does take its time in opening up to all of its possibilities, but I never really felt like I needed to grind things out in order to progress; as long as you're staying on top of your daily tasks, it doesn't take too long before Garden Story throws an entirely new element into the gameplay loop for you to explore.

While there are a wealth of options and activities to complete, if there's any one area where Garden Story feels a bit lackluster, it's in the enemy variety; there are really only about three different basic enemies, with a couple variations of each, which is disappointing, given that about 40% of the game is spent in combat. In addition to this, I found that the game does seem to have glitches related to the building mechanics, where menus won't work properly, or the camera will stop following Conchord after interacting with an object you placed yourself. (This however, seems like something easily patched)

Though I haven't really touched the post game just yet, I will say I've even enjoyed completing the side quests thus far since they don't feel too far out of the way, and some of the rewards I've received are just hilariously broken; I've been having a blast just bowling through areas to clear out monsters. All in all, I've had a really good time with this.

8/10