Taking cues from Zelda and Stardew Valley, Garden Story is a charming adventure packed with action and crafting that can often be oddly paced, dampening the fun of an otherwise delightful time.
There came a point in Garden Story after I had learned how to fish items out of the water, collect world lore, break rocks with a hammer, revitalize plants with dew, and survive a day/night cycle that the game taught me how to craft.
Garden Story had introduced several wrinkles in its Link to the Past-like homage that it had become more than just a top-down action game. Not only was I in full-blown RPG territory, I was staring down the barrel of a pixelated crafting game.
It was a bit exhausting.
Up until that point, Garden Story had been mostly straightforward. As a young grape named Concord (cute), I had taken on the role of a Guardian after the previous Guardian Plum departed the Grove. The Grove and its four regions were being attacked by the Rot, an unpleasant force full of blob-like enemies that excreted poisonous mist or seemed to possess large beasts. The Rot is the dimmest spot in the bright world of the Grove, acting as the primary antagonistic force that would disrupt an otherwise a harmonious place.
Garden Story is an infectiously cute game. Unless you are completely against otherwise adorable pixel art, it’s impossible not to love the game’s aesthetic. Not only do the vibrant colors pop right off the screen, the art itself is crisp and detailed. The world possesses a sharpness and level of detail that I didn’t expect, even on the Nintendo Switch. Though most of the playable space is covered in terrain and buildings that Concord may never walk over or enter, it evokes the provocative beauty of nature or the intimate simplicity of a home garden.
Keenly aware of how precious its greenery is, developer Picogram imbued the Grove with personality. From the many puns based on fruit and other vegetation to a jolly tackling of seasons and gaming location tropes, Garden Story‘s world is fully realized. The sense of adventure players eke out from Concord waking up on their first day to dangerous boss encounters is reminiscent of the Zelda games Garden Story so clearly is inspired by and pays respect to.
Never once did I tire of traipsing into a familiar screen or speaking to a new character with an appropriate name. While it maintains a childlike wonder, there are enough sharpened edges that Garden Story doesn’t feel suffocating in its cuteness. There is a sense of danger to the world and the threat the Rot holds and one of urgency to completing tasks for the Grove and its denizens.
As a top-down action game, Garden Story has little room to control in complex ways. Concord is capable of slashing with various weapons, guarding with a shield, running, and dodging. Along the journey, players will acquire new weapons that attack differently and can be upgraded through collecting materials. Combat generally has an impact and encounters are over quickly enough to not wear the player out. Health is recovered through holding down a button and sprinkling or drinking dew. Similar to an Estus Flask, Concord can hold a few bits of dew in a bottle until they must find a station to refill. Different bottles can heal faster but hold less charges or heal more HP at once, each with an upgrade path. The frequency and seemingly infinite use of dew stations means that the only time a player should faint is when in a dungeon.
Garden Story is a surprisingly easy game but presents itself in a way that is often needlessly complex. This starts to show after a few rounds of fighting the minions of the rot. Initially Concord only has a few stamina charges, meaning he can slash an enemy two or three times with the starting spade weapon. The most frequent Rot enemy is a purple blob that takes three hits to kill, upon which a tiny bouncing blob is ejected that can harm Concord or slow them with its toxin. Players will encounter this enemy constantly throughout Garden Story and I felt like it took forever to get enough upgrades that I could kill the main form and the tiny blob before my stamina ran out.
Enemies usually move slowly, allowing time for stamina to recover. Regardless, it takes far too long for even the most basic enemies to be defeated in Garden Story. From here, my issues with the game’s design philosophy began to branch out.
Rather than leveling up through experience points, Concord grows in strength by having the player assign memories. Memories are acquired by completing certain tasks both obvious and obscure. For example, using a certain dew multiple times unlocks a memory. Actions like running a set amount of minutes in a specific area, resting at a specific bench, collecting materials, or discovering the statues of old guardians will unlock new memories. Memories can apply specific buffs to Concord like +1 health or stamina while lowering a skill such as luck. Other memories grant Concord new utility of specific weapons, such as the dowsing rod, which is basically just a fishing rod.
The advantages of specific memories can be quite obvious but players only start out with one memory slot, unlocking new ones at an extremely slow pace. For the first few hours of this 15-20 hour journey, I had two memory slots only equipped with the first memories I had acquired because they didn’t have any negative affects. It felt pointless to equip anything that gave me an extra combo attack when health and stamina were more crucial. There are specific ways to permanently buff Concord such as defeating a boss or breaking open special crystal balls hidden throughout the world but the game doesn’t necessarily explain the latter.
As much fun as I had exploring the world of Garden Story, I loathed having to engage in meaningful combat for the first part of the game because it felt as if Concord never got any better. Even with a good bit of health and stamina, it didn’t feel like I was doing that much more damage or evolving in any way.
To pass the time in between story beats, players will exist through a day/night cycle that has Concord eventually needing to go to sleep to progress the day. Once waking, Concord is granted tasks by the village they are currently in. Up to three tasks can be completed per day and these usually consist of killing enemies in a specific screen, depositing materials at a location, or activating a bridge by hitting switches. Because Concord is tasked with keeping the Grove safe, failure to complete these tasks over the course of several days will result in the village being overtaken by the Rot, causing villagers to become scared and the world to fall into disrepair.
I never failed to let a day pass in Garden Story where I didn’t complete a task. The game never imposes a strict time limit, meaning that Concord can wander around in the dead of night finishing up what needs to be done. By completing tasks each passing day, the village will level up, allowing the shops to sell more things and open up more specific requests from individual villagers.
Though it comes across as busy work, there was a kind of harmony in finishing these simple tasks. Every day I would progress the story and help out the Grove, furthering my knowledge of the map and remembering important things for later. I just hated that Concord moved so slow and that their base run speed didn’t help much and drained stamina rapidly without a supplemental memory assigned. And if you get tired and want to switch over to a different game, keep in mind that Garden Story only saves after Concord wakes up. While days usually only last about 10 to 15 minutes, it’s not ideal.
Over the course of Garden Story, players will also collect materials by breaking trees, rocks, sandbars, and more. Rocks and wood can be deposited into the Grove’s story ad nauseam, everything else is limited to one 15-stack inventory slot. It’s a near absurd limitation because several upgrades need higher level materials that aren’t as common. Once you hit the cap of 15, the rest either need to be sold or held onto, filling up Concord’s paltry personal inventory space. Garden Story also doesn’t have the best menu navigation, meaning that keeping track of items and inventory isn’t the most intuitive.
The inventory and material limitations also make the crafting system more frustrating than it should be. In the second beach-themed village, players will learn how to craft in order to repair a bridge. Immediately after, the ability to craft any number of objects is learned. Benches, lamps, material boxes, and dozens of other recipes are learned over the course of the game and all require materials to craft. Most objects aren’t cheap to craft and players need to find specific spots that are sizable enough to support what’s being built.
Honestly, I can’t speak that much to Garden Story‘s crafting. It came about halfway through the story when I was already invested in progressing Concord’s journey and growing them into a more capable fighter. Crafting felt like it would prohibit me from upgrading because both require unique resources that might be needed through backtracking. That being said, I can see a number of players really falling in love with this aspect of the game not only because of the agency it gives them in bettering the Grove but because of how gorgeous that game looks. Being able to add a personal flair to a town and make it look how you would like is something not many games with these level of visual appeal offer.
Garden Story has its flaws. Yet looking past the ambition of developer Picogram is not easy. In this adorable adventure of heroism and vegetation, players will encounter a number of mechanics that may frustrate or may cause them to fall deeper in love with an expertly realized world. Combat is solid and when not bogged down by the limited upgrade system, allows for fairly hectic boss fights. The gameplay loop can be repetitive but is able to be consumed in such small morsels that one may enjoy picking up Garden Story every day just to get a small fix. There’s a lot of promise here in terms of a sequel but in the next go round, I think a bit of editing might be beneficial. As much of an embarrassment of riches Garden Story may seem, it can be a lot to take in for such a compact adventure.
