Product Info

Platform

Switch, PC

Publisher

Rose City Games

Developer

Picogram

Genre

Action, Adventure, RPG, Simulation

Players

1

File Size (Minimum)

106 MB

Release Date (NA)

Aug 11, 2021

Purchase From

eShop

Steam

Garden Story is a single-player, Zelda-esque adventure RPG developed by Portland, Oregon, based indie team Picogram and published with the help of Rose City Games. Picogram has produced a handful of indie, pixel-style, online games such as P.E. Noire, Planet Pain, and Goodbye Doggy. Garden Story is the first commercial title for the developer, impressing many folks during the recent Nintendo Indie World Showcase in August 2021.

The game features a lush world filled with a unique, close-knit community, and you face challenges as you work to revitalize your home island. Explore the various unique ecosystems and dungeons while battling monsters with an array of tools, bringing the community together, and restoring the island.

Heard It Through the Grapevine

The story starts with a young grape named Concord fresh off the vine on an island called The Grove. Unfortunately, The Grove’s existence is threatened by purple sludge monsters called the Rot, which have caused trouble for inhabitants throughout the island. Concord is the freshly named Guardian of The Grove and is faced with a difficult task of taking on the Rot and rebuilding the community and island.

Although several inhabitants voice their doubt about Concord’s abilities as a Guardian, there are several close allies that help guide him on the journey. With their help, Concord has his work cut out for him in gathering resources, battling the Rot, helping others with their problems, rebuilding structures and libraries, and bringing people together.

Grape of Wrath

Concord has many tools at his disposal to aid in his battles against the Rot, such as a sword, a hammer, and a dowsing rod. Each weapon possesses stats for the damage, speed, and range. For example, the hammer does more damage than the sword, but the sword is faster and has a longer reach. Uniquely, the dowsing rod acts like a fishing rod, doing damage at varying ranges from close to far away. Each time a weapon is used, it consumes one bar of stamina, which requires a few seconds to recharge back to full. Each weapon can charge for a special attack, but it consumes more bars of stamina, such as an air slash with the sword or area-of-effect damage with the hammer. In addition, each weapon can be upgraded multiple times throughout the game, increasing its stats, with a certain amount of currency and resources.

In addition to pure combat strategies, Concord acquires a shield which allows the character to block incoming attacks, which is useful for ranged threats. Other times, evasive maneuvers such as running or rolling can get Concord away from harm. However, each of those maneuvers consumes stamina. Your stamina is limited at the beginning of the adventure, but eventually, the character increases his stamina and health bars upon breaking colored orbs found throughout the game. These orbs may resist breaking until the correct type and damage amount is applied (e.g., an upgraded hammer or charged sword attack). Many of these orbs are optional and sometimes require backtracking, allowing each person to decide how conservative or thorough they want to play the game.

Lastly, there are memories that can be equipped to a particular memory equipment slot, which can be expanded later on. They can be adjusted at any time by returning to the leaf bed at a base. These memories are rather useful as they can provide Concord with stat boosts (though, they sometimes lower a different stat), a boost to resource gathering, or even a special move such as a double air slash with the sword. Each of these memories needs to be unlocked, which may require certain actions to be performed, such as making X number of strikes with a sword (criterion hidden). In addition, Concord cannot use the memories until the corresponding Guardian statue is discovered in the game progression.

Gather the Goods

Concord earns money in the form of colored coins (of varying values) through various avenues: defeating enemies, breaking stones and stumps, fishing, daily mailbox income, and even selling surpluses of resources gathered. The currency is helpful in upgrading weapons and tools, expanding dew bottle capacity and effectiveness, or even unlocking neat hats (sun hats with glasses, mining helmets, etc.) and backpacks to customize Concord.

Initially, only basic resources can be gathered, but as the game progresses, more diverse ones become available. This slow progression prevents the character from upgrading weapons too quickly, which creates a nice balance in combat. Two core resources are stones and wood/sticks, which can be deposited into various shared storage boxes throughout the island. These core resources can be applied towards construction (not available at first), allowing you to build more storage and repair boxes. Construction becomes even more advanced later on as you repair libraries and unlock blueprints, letting you make items like umbrellas or fences. It gives another dimension to the game and is quite enjoyable and tailored to folks who enjoy crafting-style games. Unfortunately, the crafting portion comes too late in the experience and carries little weight with the game’s core elements.

Resources can be placed in the storage box up to a max amount of 15 per item. (Sandstone or glass shards can be useful in upgrading weapons and tools or even in completing certain quests, so gather plenty.) Item stacking only occurs in the storage boxes, though, so expect lots of twigs and stones clogging up Concord’s personal inventory. Fortunately, the contents of storage boxes are shared and are available from any box. Still, the storage boxes seem oddly placed in some towns and sometimes feel a bit out of the way. Moreover, with Concord only being able to carry a limited number of items, it leads to frequent trips back and forth to store stuff, complete quests, and upgrade items. In many cases, upgrades require the character to backtrack to earlier portions of the game because of that 15 item limit. Thankfully, construction resources (twigs, branches, stones, etc.) can be endlessly stored without taking up a precious spot.

Guardian Duties

There are several unique zones with their own towns to explore. For example, Spring Hamlet has lush greenery, bridges, and rivers, and Summer Bar is an ocean shore with sandy beaches, shells, and corrals. Each zone has its own stores, library, and main quest lines. In addition, each zone has its own home base with similar elements: a dew replenishment station, a coat rack to swap out backpacks and hats, and a leaf sleeping bed for saving, progressing to a new day, and equipping memories.

Each day, naturally progressing from morning to night, provides 2-3 daily quests to complete that allow that zone to level up in different categories up to a max of 5. Each level up may unlock new items in the shop or new monsters in the wild. The daily quests range in difficulty from 1-3 star difficulty, such as clearing a blockage in a drain with a dowsing rod to defeating a certain number of Rot in the area. Daily quests generally are specific to the area Concord decides to rest in for the night, and they cycle through a handful of options, which can feel repetitive. Of note, Concord can only rest at night, and it is the only way to save progress in the game. The save portion can be quite frustrating if you need to take a quick break or have completed the desired activities for the day early. You’ll just have to wait around until night. Once nighttime does roll around, the game does not progress to a new day automatically. Instead, it waits on the character to sleep, letting you enjoy things at your own pace.

Each zone also has a dungeon to explore with a boss at the end. Sometimes, these dungeons may be the only location for a particular resource, such as driftwood in the Summer Bar dungeon. The puzzles are fairly straightforward and are not overly difficult to complete, such as moving a box to a designated location or using a dowsing rod to pull a lever to open a door. The bosses shouldn’t provide too much trouble either.

The Rot Lot

You’ll generally be fighting the Rot throughout The Grove. They are similar visually, being all blobs. That said, their colors vary based on the region they’re found in, and their headpieces specify their type. For example, one Rot with a shell for a headpiece charges you, while one with a snow headpiece shoots purple projectiles. Most of the Rot are fairly easy to deal with early on, and later, the only tricky part is determining which weapon to use. For the shell Rot, for example, the dowsing rod removes the shell headpiece, leaving the monster vulnerable to damage from other weapons. Late at night, the monsters tend to increase in number and intensity, which can overwhelm the character, especially early on in the game. However, as your stamina and health bars increase, the number of equipped memories expands, and dews (healing items) get upgraded, it becomes quite easy to muscle through monsters and even bosses. If Concord happens to perish, he will wake up at the start of the next day in the last base used for resting with a minimal penalty of losing 15% of his money.

Bosses are pretty straightforward and tend to get easier as the game progresses. While bosses appear different from the Rot-themed blobs, taking forms like a giant worm or octopus, they are able to summon a number of blob monsters to aid in battle. The first boss, Bookworm, found in the library, shoots projectiles that need to be blocked. You need to defeat its minions while also attacking the boss when it’s vulnerable at certain points. This boss proves to be quite a challenge mainly due to your limited stamina and health, as well as the number of dews available. The rest of the bosses can be attacked without being overly focused on mechanics. Your stats and gear will likely depend upon the amount of grinding you put into the game, which can change the difficulty of combat.

Traveling the Grove

Concord has quite a bit of traveling to do while completing quests and gathering resources. For the vast majority of the game, it is done by foot. This starts to get tough later in the game with the amount of backtracking needed. Completing quests may potentially consume the day before you get a moment to tackle a small side task available during the day only. Eventually, Concord gains access to warping between regions, but it comes a bit too late. Also, some of the warp locations are strange. In one region, it’s the base, but in another, it’s 3-4 zones away from the base. More convenient locations made available sooner would go a long way.

Fruitful Friends and More

The Grove is jammed with NPCs, from fruits to frogs, that boast a broad array of colorful and charming designs. Each character has their own style of speaking to the main character, though these dialogues tend to be long-winded further along in the game. Unfortunately, there is no option to skip or cancel the dialogue with an NPC, which gets old when certain NPCs are next to a needed resource. The game does a great job avoiding revealing too much detail early on, which allows core elements to the storyline to gradually come forth without spoiling the plot.

The game’s visuals are quite charming and simple, with The Grove having a Stardew Valley-like design. Each of the regions of The Grove has its own theme, such as Spring Hamlet’s rivers and lush greenery or Autumn Patch’s dry and dirt-covered lands. However, the most impressive portion of the game is the music in the background. Grahm Nesbitt did a fantastic job, providing a breadth of cheerful and charming tunes to create a peaceful experience during gameplay. It ranges from easygoing instrumental piano to songs that feature an accordion and guitar. It is easily the type of soundtrack that can be enjoyed outside of the game.

Lastly, there are a couple minor design issues which may potentially get worked out through later patches. The first and biggest of the issues is that the start screen is black for over a minute until the start menu appears. It can be quite frustrating getting into the game unless the current game is already running in the background. The second issue involves an early game storyline quest in which Concord is tasked with three separate quests. Unfortunately, it is possible to do these quests in a different order than intended, leading to Concord being stuck in an area called Bell Row and unable to leave or complete the quest. This then requires restarting from the last savepoint and losing progress. With many game releases, these types of issues occur quite a bit, and hopefully, they will get resolved with future patches. Fortunately, these issues are not big enough to seriously detract from the charming gameplay.

Cultivate Your Own Experience

Overall, Garden Story is a lovely and easygoing game that appeals to a broad audience. Despite some easier-than-expected dungeons and some elements being introduced much later than they should be, the game more than makes up for any shortcomings with its charming design, music, and gameplay. It’s enjoyable to play, no matter how you approach it. So jump off the vine and soak up this charming and wholesome experience under the sun!

A Nintendo Switch code was provided for this review and gameplay footage.