All posts tagged in Review
Oct 12, 2023
If you’re unfamiliar with APICO, it’s a laid-back beekeeping sim game. You can find bees, breed them to create new types, and release them into the wild to repopulate the world. There’s even some resource gathering, home building, and exploration involved. Plus, you can use honey the bees produce to make other fun items to sell, like Apicola (honey soda)!
Starting Out
APICO is super laid-back, but can feel a little overwhelming at first. Instead of implementing forced, unskippable tutorials, the game uses a set of books you can access at any time at the bottom of the screen. The first one, “Grandpa’s Guide”, contains 46 chapters. These chapters are tutorial pages that explain what to do, and reward you when you complete it. These pages of explanations can be accessed even after completing, which is great for those of us who are forgetful.
Graphics and Bees
APICO is SO cute. Seriously cute. Its pixel graphics lend a sense of nostalgia to it, but it’s beautifully colored, too. There’s no overwhelmingly bright colors and nothing is difficult to look at. Nevermind that the little beehives and different wild bee species are adorable, too. Plus, each one of those has their own specific color so it’s easy to determine what type of bee it is at a glance. To make it easier to determine what kind of bee you’re looking at, it’s labeled with a three-letter abbreviation. Rolling your mouse over the bee will pop-up a small window with more information about it, too.
As for breeding the bees, Grandpa’s Guide walks you through setting that up really well. Then, “Beelia’s Almanac” further discusses each species. It also rewards you for discovering different types of bees! There are 45 different bee species for you to discover, making for a good amount of playtime as it may take a few rounds of crossbreeding to produce new species. Plus, you can use what your bees produce to make things like Apicola to sell in order to advance in other areas of the game.
The World
The world of APICO is fairly small. There’s the mainland you start on, swamp biome, tundra biome, and the Hallows located at the center of the map. There are also some fishing spots in the ocean, and a few coral reefs which were recently added in. So, while exploring is a part of the game as each biome has its own unique species of bees, it’s not the main focus. Each biome has been lovingly crafted, though, and offers its own resources.
At first, the map feels too small, but it’s honestly perfectly sized for a game that isn’t adventure-focused. It’s easy to get to the different biomes with the boat to get resources or bees, and be back home quickly. It’s not a chore going anywhere, especially when you’ve turned on the Walk Through Trees accessibility option (which I recommend using; it makes playing so much easier). It also places the focus solely on the bees and breeding them, which is perfect. And you can terraform! So you can make space to suit your needs. Create the perfect bee garden with a little work!
Final Thoughts
APICO is an otherwise relaxing time. There are no time constraints to complete things. You can explore how you wish, even swimming through the shallower waters around the islands. You can terraform and build and decorate how and when you wish (items are unlocked via completing quests and such, but otherwise done at your pace). There are NPCs you can talk to, but they aren’t adamant and annoying about needing interaction. They also act as the shops of the world, offering useful items. It’s a great little game that’s perfect for learning about bees! And if you’ve done everything in the game, it not only supports, but encourages modding so you can get even more out of this sweet little game!
Nevermind that upon starting up the game, the main menu has links to the wiki! That’s a wonderfully useful piece of the internet that I used a few times as I played. There’s also a link to a charity that helps our real-life bee populations! So, not only is APICO a cute little bee game, it endeavors to support our real-life bee preservation efforts. I couldn’t love it more.
I give this game:
You can find APICO on Steam, Nintendo Switch, Xbox, and PlayStation now!
Check out some of my other reviews! I’ve covered Lonesome Village, Innchanted, and even Garden Story!
- Oct 5, 2023
Lonesome Village is a relaxing puzzle-solving life sim where you play as the adorable Wes, a coyote. Wes is looking to solve the mystery of this empty village and the tower that popped up. You’ll enter that tower to complete a number of different puzzles in order to free the villagers trapped on each level. As you do that, the story of what happened will unfold, and it’ll be up to you to stop the evil that threatens it all.
The Pros
There is no doubt that Lonesome Village is uber adorable. The art is wildly cute, and each character you save is some variety of animal. Each has a great individual design. Even the main character, who’s a little coyote character dressed like Link. Even the overworld designs of each area you can explore are cute. Overall, this game is visually great.
The puzzle tower is a fun concept. You’re tasked with rescuing the villagers of the world, and to do that you need to complete a puzzle on each floor. Completing the puzzle releases villagers from the statues they’ve been encased in. Sometimes it’s just one character, sometimes it’s a whole family of characters. The puzzles aren’t super hard, which is perfect for having a relaxing game play experience. Some of them make you think harder than others, but none of them had me stumped for too long. I enjoyed the variety of puzzles, too. It wasn’t repetitive rehashing of the same ones over and over.
The day/night cycle doesn’t affect things like sleep, either. I found that to be a nice touch. It adds ambiance and life to the world, but doesn’t lock you into a specific way to play. There’s no running to bed to beat the inevitable 2am pass out, like some other life sims!
Coronya and Quests
I’m afraid that despite mostly liking Lonesome Village, my cons list is longer than the pros. True to early Legend of Zelda vibes, you’re equipped with a mirror item that allows you to talk to your fairy companion, Coronya. This is a great way to have a reminder of what you were doing as far as the story goes, as there is no quest log. However, she likes to pop up from time to time at the shrine levels of the tower. These levels require you to find the item the shrine requests and place it there in order to open the door to the next floor of the tower.
Coronya likes to pop up on these levels to talk to you about what the item is and how to get it. That’s cool, and often useful. However, she then returns to wherever she comes from, and must discuss EXACTLY what she just said, word-for-word, via the mirror. She’s also adamant about telling you that you must save everyone in the tower, so don’t forget to do that! It’s all so unnecessary. The point of the game is to release people from the tower. And I certainly don’t need an exact repeat of what was just said, right after it’s said. I would have preferred a quest log.
Which brings me to the fetch quests you get from villagers. Lonesome Village’s newly released inhabitants will have quests for you to complete. It’s how you’ll earn hearts to continue through the tower. Talk to a villager and they immediately launch into their quest, then it immediately opens your inventory so you can complete the quest, even if it’s your first time hearing about the quest. Just be sure to write down what it is you’re looking for if you go accept multiple quests. Again, there’s no quest log to keep up with what needs to be done. It made for a frustrating time when I’d pick the game back up and had to go around talking to people to figure out where I was in my fetch quest endeavors.
There is No Autosave and Storage is Lacking
I repeat, there is no auto save. Maybe I’m spoiled by modern games, but I expect autosave to be the standard in games these days. Having the ability to also save at will is great too, but autosave has saved me so much trouble over the years. Lonesome Village doesn’t even have the sleep to save mechanics like Stardew Valley. Instead, you have to visit one of the statues scattered across the map to save. I don’t have words for the frustration I felt when I thought I’d saved, but hadn’t and closed the game. I was set back several floors of the towers, and several villager quests.
Backpack size is woefully tiny. Access to the storage chest isn’t super convenient. There’s a chest in your house, your tent, and in the tower elevator. Sifting through storage is fiddly, at best. Everything shows up in a line that you have to scroll through to find what you need. The backpack is the same way when turning in quest items. Plus, there is one hotkey slot, so you have to go into your backpack, choose the item you want to hotkey, then use the item. It makes switching tools cumbersome and slow.
Final Thoughts
I’d still recommend this game overall. It’s cute and chill. There’s no rush to complete things, so you can play at your own pace. Plus, there’s no stamina drain or health to lose, adding another layer for a stress-free experience.
I’d rate Lonesome Village:
You can find Lonesome Village on Steam, Epic Games, GOG, Switch, and Xbox now!
- Oct 4, 2023
Yaruul’s family inn has been stolen by the evil wizard landlord, Colin. You must reclaim the family’s legacy by managing the inn solo or with your friends. Brew potions, dispel curses, catch fish, cook food, and fight negative influences. Prove you’re a better innkeeper than the evil wizard by making the inn a success! Innchanted is a heartfelt and hectic adventure set in a fantasy universe inspired by Indigenous Australian tales.
The Levels
Pick from four different, adorable playable characters and cooperate with your team or even an AI companion to run this magic inn. Innchanted’s AI can be assigned to serve customers, refill potion stations, or defend against thieves. Serving customers includes cooking meat or dispensing potions, too. They’re quite useful for filling in when you’re playing solo or even with a second person. The AI is a little slow moving, as they can’t dash like player characters can, but that only adds a little bit of challenge without overwhelming you, I think.
Plus, the layout changes every day, so you never know what obstacles you’ll face! You’ll encounter different challenges across Innchanted’s 50+ unique levels while serving patrons. One level may be wide open and easy to navigate, while the next has counters that move every so often meaning the level layout changes while you play. And don’t forget about the thieving birds waiting in the tree outside for the opportunity to take off with a slab of meat. Don’t leave your items unattended for too long!
The Inn
Use your hard-earned shells to upgrade your inn. Make grills cook faster. Increase your team’s efficiency. Even unlock decorations to beautify your inn. From fun wall flags to pretty rugs, you’ll find over 60 decorative items in Innchanted to beautify your inn to give it that personal touch. And at night, take time to unwind, speak with other characters, make important choices that will affect your next day, and practice new mechanics you’ve learned.
Final Thoughts
Innchanted is a challenging, but fun adventure akin to Overcooked. It’s perfect for playing with friends! It doesn’t present the same frenetic, frantic player experience as Overcooked, though. It feels a little more chill and laid back, while still being silly and fun. It’s a cute little game that I’d recommend to anyone for some fun, though.
I give Innchanted a:
You can find this fun co-op game on Steam now!
- Sep 6, 2023
Coffee Talk 2: Hibiscus & Butterfly is the second episode in the Coffee Talk series. In it, you play as the proprietor of a cozy little coffee shop that’s only open at night. Set in an alternate present-day Seattle, join a cast of fantasy friends and serve up some delicious hot drinks as you explore the world by listening to their stories. Even use your phone to follow their lives outside of the coffee shop via social media, and return lost items to further influence story outcomes.
The Story
I’ll be honest, I did not play Coffee Talk. I have only played Coffee Talk 2, but I don’t feel like I missed out on anything vital to the story. I’m sure meeting the characters in Coffee Talk would have made their stories richer, more fleshed out. However, it was easy to settle into the story, overall. The characters are interesting and diverse. They have varying personalities that you get to experience through the conversations you have with them. Each person struggling with their own real-feeling issues, as well as sharing their joys and achievements with you really adds a beautiful, personal touch to the game. You’re more than just a barista at their favorite late-night hangout. These characters feel familiar and real. Nevermind the sass and sarcasm that’s thrown around. You’re genuinely a friend to everyone, and it’s heartwarming.
Setting the Scene
Besides the fun characters, the setting is nice and cozy, too. Set in rainy Seattle, the ongoing rainstorm provides a wonderful sound backdrop. Pair that with the lofi chillhop beats that play and Coffee Talk 2 really has a great, relaxing environment. The overall color palette is pleasing to the eye, too. Some characters wear some bright colors, like Lucas in his bright yellow hoodie, but it’s not overwhelming. The coffee shop is decorated in neutrals and muted colors, too. It’s an easy-to-look at environment that still offers a great variation in color so it’s not boring. It is the perfect cozy environment.
The Drinks
Figuring out what people want to drink via hints (mostly) was an interesting game play element. It not only gives Coffee Talk 2 a sense of replayability so you can discover all of the drinks and outcomes, but makes it a little bit more than just a reading experience. Correctly, or incorrectly, guessing someone’s drink gives you just a touch more immersive play than if you simply read the pre-written dialogue and picked pre-made drinks. Now, you can influence the conversation and other game outcomes by serving drinks. Plus, the latte art portion is fun. I’m by no means good at it, but it’s fun to play with and see what you can make. I made a palm tree once! Accidentally.
Final Thoughts
This was a chill, relaxing game. It was fun serving drinks, and interesting reading the conversations with everyone. There’s no rush to complete things, and you can save in the middle of a day. Coffee Talk 2 is the perfect cozy visual novel, really. I can’t recommend this enough for anyone looking for a relaxing, no stakes, no pressure game to play. It’s perfect for curling up on a comfy couch, cozy blanket on a rainy day.
I give this game:
You can find Coffee Talk 2 on Steam, Epic Games, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox!
- Jul 20, 2023
Pretty Princess Magical Garden Island is the sequel to Pretty Princess Party, and just as cutesy, magical, and pretty as the other. Only this time, you play as a princess who’s trying to revitalize a once flourishing island. You have full control over designing the island, as well.
Raise livestock to receive animal products to use in recipes. Grow crops and flowers. Manufacture other necessary items to craft beautiful dresses, hair styles, makeup, and decorations. Complete requests from visitors to earn money and points that level you up. You’ll unlock new buildings, decorations, and wearables as you level.
Decorate and Garden and Decorate Some More!
Pretty Princess Magical Garden Island looks a lot like Animal Crossing, honestly. You’re on an island that you get to design and decorate. You’re in charge of fixing it up without help, and there’s fruit picking and fishing to be done. Even the look of the map is Animal Crossing-esque. However, Garden Island successfully set itself apart, I think.
There’s mining, farming, even animals to look after, and you have functional craft houses and restaurants that produce different kinds of food. There’s a functional element to the game that gives me a reason to play beyond just decorating. Garden Island’s livestock aren’t needy, they’re simply a building you place, you feed them, then they produce items. Farming is easy, too. You buy seeds, plant them, and wait! There’s a cute little chime that plays when a crop grows to maturity, too. So don’t go into this thinking you’ll have a Stardew Valley or Harvest Moon experience. You won’t. It’s just what ACNH should have done with crops.
There is a timer to making items, however. The base time is five minutes, though they can be up to ten minutes. These timers apply to crops, the animals, crafting buildings, and restaurants. When I first encountered this mechanic, I thought it would get annoying fast. That wasn’t the case, though. I found that there’s enough to do around Garden Island that I’d get swept up in something else and not even realize five or ten minutes had passed.
The best aspect, and probably the main aspect of Garden Island, though, is the decorating. Decorate yourself, change your hair, slap on some makeup and hair bows, then go pretty up the island. It’s almost overwhelming how many incredible options for decorating there are. From pretty and cutesy to gothic, to normal garden and cottagecore styles, you shouldn’t have trouble picking out the perfect pieces to use. The excitement of this is a little offset by the need to craft dyes and other materials to use to buy the decor. However, you can place multiple of one building to have a whole crafting set-up going so it’s really not a huge issue.
Final Thoughts
Despite the minor gripes, I really, really enjoy Pretty Princess Magical Garden Island. It’s fun and simple and forgiving. I can pick it up for a little while to fill some time, or I can marathon it all day. I can create beautiful water themed areas or spooky gothic and Halloween displays. Or, if I’m feeling in the mood, deck the whole place out in bright pinks befitting a pretty princess. The purposeful crafting and fulfilling order really gives me a sense of accomplishment, too. It makes me want to play because I have to earn levels to unlock more stuff, and craft items to get that stuff.
Overall, I give this one:
You can find Pretty Princess Magical Garden Island on Nintendo Switch!
- Jul 6, 2023
It’s no secret: Stardew Valley is my favorite cozy game; it’s possibly my all time favorite. I’m eagerly, and impatiently awaiting the release of Haunted Chocolatier, too. Until then, I’m always on the lookout for the next great farming sim. There are some great ones out there, and many more coming out that have potential. One Lonely Outpost was definitely one I’ve had my eye on for a while. Cozy farming sim where you restore the dying planet to its lush former glory and establish a brand new colony of people? Sign me up! Except, it didn’t quite live up to my expectations.
The Good
You can find One Lonely Outpost on Steam, and it is undoubtedly cute, and getting to restore the planet, while watching the flora and fauna slowly return is heart-warming. I enjoy the feeling of accomplishment from rebuilding the world into something liveable for my character and the NPCs. Getting to live on a planet that isn’t just some carbon copy of Earth, but actually feels like a surreal, alien planet is perfect. It immerses you into the story more, and makes the game just different enough, but with familiar elements.
What I really enjoyed was that sprinklers unlock early game. I can ramp up my farming almost immediately because of this, and ended up building a sprawling farm. There’s no endless struggling to complete tasks for in-game months while fighting your tiny amount of energy. Plus, it doesn’t feel like an end-game condition or after-thought. I can’t express enough how happy I was to get those sprinklers early.
The Bad
I know I just praised the sprinklers, but I have to also express how clunky they are. You have the sprinkler itself, which only waters crops within a specific radius of the sprinkler head. That’s normal and common in farming games. However, One Lonely Outpost also requires you to have a water pump placed near a water source, which will then provide water for the sprinklers to water crops. Then, you need solar panels to power those pumps. And each item has a specific range, so to cover a wide area, you’ll need multiples of each. Luckily, you can place a water pump by a water source, then place another water pump within the area of the first, and daisy chain the pumps to cover an area. However, if you’re wanting an aesthetic farm plot, it’s going to take some real planning.
The map is another problem for me. It’s SO low tech. You’re over here crafting food processors, forges, and water pumps from parts, but your map only shows you a broad overview of the One Lonely Planet world. It doesn’t zoom into the specific spot in a region you’re in. It doesn’t have visuals so you can find the paths to other regions. You just have to guess, and really commit the place to memory. Nevermind not having icons for the NPCs, which is fine. Stardew Valley does the same, and that was workable. It just feels a little silly that we’re building a brand new colony with solar panels and cooking stations we’ve crafted, but the map is basically useless.
The Ugly
Fishing is usually my least liked activity in farming sims, because they’re often just annoying. Stardew Valley, for example, has got to be my least favorite fishing activity. It gets easier with practice and new items, but it’s often the skill I ignore when I play. However, the fishing mechanic in One Lonely Outpost is perhaps worse than that. You get this cool little fishing drone that you release into a body of water, which initiates a minigame.
You control the drone by moving left or right, and dashing forward to catch a fish. Then, you play a little minigame where you click when the indicator is inside a tiny bar that moves. Sometimes it’s fast, and sometimes you do this up to three times, and this is what determines if you catch the fish. Unfortunately, the drone maneuverability is not on par with the fish. It’s slow and cumbersome, while the fish are swift and swim away if you approach too close. You also need to resurface before the battery runs out, or you lose your drone, forcing you to buy a new one or make a new one. They’re not that cheap, either.
You can buy drones and other items from Linny. Except, Linny is the new Marnie. I think I successfully caught her in her shop twice, maybe three times since she moved to the planet. I imagine she has a specific schedule I just wasn’t able to suss out, but it sure did make buying necessary items from her unduly difficult.
What really bothered me was the glitching. Most of the time, using my bug catching drone bugged the whole game. When it’s out, it shows an area on the round so you can see if you’re close enough to catch a bug. If I had the drone out and walked to a new region, that area disappeared and I just had to guess. Then, it morphed into only showing up when in one specific region. This issue also caused the areas shown for sprinklers, water pumps, and solar panels. So, I struggled to rearrange my farm unless I did it first thing when turning on the game and before I ever used my bug catching drone.
Final Thoughts
It has potential, and some of my complaints are more personal preference than a problem with the game. However, there were enough problems that I just didn’t vibe with the game. One Lonely Outpost is in Early Access, though, so there is hope that it has the wrinkles ironed out and it improves. I truly hope it does, too, because I enjoyed the atmosphere of it. Until then, I rate it:
You can check out some of my other reviews, too! Roots of Pacha, DREDGE, and Ooblets are all great cozy games I’d recommend!
- Aug 13, 2019
Liar Princess and the Blind Prince is a fairy-tale puzzle platformer that is like playing through the pages of an old, yellowing storybook. Developed by Nippon Ichi Software in Japan, it was localized by NIS America and released in February 2019. After playing the first two (of six) chapters, I’m here to give you my impression of playing this charming game on Nintendo Switch.
The Story
Liar Princess and the Blind Prince looks like a fairy-tale storybook, and reads like one, too. The basic premise is that a monstrous wolf sings in the forest every night, and a young prince of a nearby castle hears her, and listens, because he loves her voice. He applauds enthusiastically for her song every time, and the wolf is very grateful, though she knows she cannot go down and meet him, because she is a monster.
One night the little prince decides he must see the owner of this mysterious voice, and he braves the dangerous, monster-ridden forest to meet her. But when he finally crests the rise the wolf always settles on for her singing, the wolf reaches out to cover his eyes, because if he sees her, he’ll know! He’ll see that she’s a monster, and her happy little audience will disappear, and she doesn’t want him to go. She loves that he listens to her every night. But she IS a wolf, and her claws are long and sharp, and in trying to cover his eyes, she blinds him.
With the little prince now blind and alone, rejected by his family as useless, our story truly begins. The wolf is so remorseful that she seeks out the witch of the forest to gain a human form for herself. With that, she will be able to take the prince by the hand and lead him through a forest fraught with danger, to bring him to the witch so that she can restore his vision.
The Art
The style of Liar Princess and the Blind Prince is a beautiful variety of adorable. With dark sepia-tones over everything, it gives the feel of the deeply yellowed pages of an old book. The dramatic black outlines, thick and inky, add atmosphere, giving a feeling of darkness and danger to an otherwise pretty world. There’s a simplicity to the style, like a children’s book, even though the scenes, when brought together, are intricate. The animation is smooth but also simple. There’s no high-speed action to try to keep track of in Liar Princess, and that feels in keeping with the story and setting.
The Puzzling Platforms
The gameplay relies on you having two forms…both wolf and princess. If you jump too high, you’ll both plop to the ground when you land, being only small children without the athletic ability to handle such a thing smoothly. A short fall won’t hurt you, but you’ll take a moment to gather yourselves and get back up, so don’t fall when there is an enemy nearby!
In wolf form, you’re actually very tough and strong and can jump much higher, as well as fight the enemies that stand in your way. The prince himself is another crucial game-play element, because you can’t hold the prince’s hand to guide him with a paw full of claws, so you will need to constantly be swapping between princess and wolf forms to best tackle what lay before you.
The prince won’t move without you. He can’t see. He doesn’t know what’s around him, except danger. It’s no wonder that every time you take his hand, his look of worry disappears to be replaced with a sweet, reassured smile. If you let go of his hand, he’ll stay exactly where you left him (so please don’t leave him anywhere with monsters…they’ll gobble him right up!) He can’t see you, so you can transform back to a wolf at any time and do what you need to, to clear his path, and then the two of you can proceed onward again.
Protect this adorable pair! High investment
The game really makes you regret your mistakes. If you don’t jump far enough to catch the next platform solidly, the prince you’re pulling along behind you will fall helplessly to his death. The princess will drop to her knees in shocked realization at what she’s done, and she covers her eyes and weeps as the End Game screen pops up and starts the reloading process, to force you to start the level over again. You have to protect that precious little dumpling at all costs. Everything you’re doing is for him, after all!
In some games you might press Y once to take his hand, then press it again to release it, but in Liar Princess you must hold Y continually to keep hold of the prince’s hand. It’s a good choice of mechanic, in my opinion, as it really lets you feel how much attention you need to pay to your teeny buddy, to guide and keep him safe. It also means you sometimes have to act fast, such as if you’re walking toward a bouncy mushroom in an area with respawning monsters. You’ll have to release the prince’s hand, transform into the wolf to quickly dispatch the monsters, transform back to a princess so you can grab the prince’s hand again, and jump onto that mushroom to propel you to the ledge before the next monster can get to you.
So, is it worth playing?
Here’s a confession. I am terrible at platformers. I have no sense of timing, and, like my entire family (so there’s no hope I can escape it!) my reflexes are slow. So even though I’ve heard from others that the game’s platforming is simple or easy, for me, Liar Princess and the Blind Prince has actually been quite difficult. In fact, I’m stuck right now with my wee prince up on a ledge, and I can’t figure out how to get him back down, or how to go forward, and I’m only at the end of Chapter 2!
Normally this would frustrate me until I gave up, since if a game is more frustrating than fun, I want no part of it. Instead, after dying twenty times in a row, I’m going to look it up online, to figure out what I’m doing wrong, so I can go back and continue the story. I need to see these two brave little munchkins to the end! Even if one of the munchkins is actually an enormous wolf with claws like swords.
The game makes these two impossible to resist. It isn’t just the basic story. As you go along, you’ll get little interludes between the two. As an early example: the wolf can’t deal with fire, and the prince doesn’t like the wolf’s beloved raw meat, but does love flowers. So the prince will carry lanterns for the wolf, and the wolf will go out of her way to get flowers to give to the prince.
They are, quite simply, the cutest and most endearing pair of adventurers I’ve ever seen in a puzzle-platformer game. I cannot leave them alone. I will struggle mightily against my many defects as a gamer, and complete this game no matter what it takes!
Where to buy
The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince is available digitally on Nintendo Switch and Playstation 4, as well as in physical form at most game retailers. If you’re interested in this game, why not also check out The Way Remastered, another emotionally-charged platformer? Or try Another Sight, a story about a girl losing her sight when the tunnel she was exploring with her kitty companion collapses.
- Jul 3, 2019
Garden Paws, created by Bitten Toast Games, has it all in this simulation/adventure! You can garden, farm, fish, mine, run a shop, tame wild animals, decorate yourself and your home, build new stores and homes for the town, and much more! Constant quests to either progress the town or to help out some villagers makes it so that everything you do has a grander purpose, aside from just being cute that is.
The game is out now on Steam but is still not content complete. Meaning, the developers state that they are still building upon the game and doing frequent updates. However, there’s already a lot to do and we highly recommend starting to play now and be part of the feedback! It’s even on sale until July 9th, 2019! We’d like to also thank Bitten Toast Games for providing us with a Steam code so we could do a review and show our Potato Family the finer details of Garden Paws.
Customizing Your Character
When first creating your adorable character, you get to choose from 10 different species: Cat, Bunny, Fox, Bird, Badger, Dragon, Chipmunk, Horse, Dog, or Bear! Afterward, choose your color and design, which are called “skins”. Skins can be found in treasure chests or purchased later on after gaining access to that specific shop. Your character customization doesn’t even stop there! Once you begin to play, you can start getting clothes and accessories to wear such as glasses, headbands/hats, dresses, backpacks, and even beautiful wings of all sorts! Side note: the music will indicate when a treasure chest is nearby!
I am the night! One of the most interesting accessories for your character is the Glider. After completing a certain quest, you get a free glider but you then have the option to buy prettier ones. With a glider you can jump from all of the hills and soar through the air at high speeds. I love getting around this way and taking short-cuts to where I want to go. It’s also a great way to reaching new little islands with different items to forage. In one of the updates by the developers, it is said that there will be a fast-travel method to unlock in the middle of your second year! It’s so wonderful that they’ve added some goals for the next year which makes me want to continue playing all the more!
Completing quest for glider 
Swim or fly here for honey
Building Up the Town
The town of Florens starts only with a few characters, Frank being a vital part in helping you expand which brings in new villagers and shops. Certain buildings and characters are only available after quests, but for the most part you start off with quite the list. You’ll want to start off with the Blacksmith and the Miner’s Camp as they progress your main quests and unlock new areas to explore! Frank will ask you for some materials for certain expansions or buildings, or he will tell you to purchase the building outright from his Upgrade Table.
The Upgrade Table In the town there will be a few villagers with booths that sell cloth, seeds, inventory expansions, and lemonade (to gain more stamina). The more quests you do for them, the more items they will be able to sell! Sometimes they will even supply you with some blueprints so you can build your own things from workstations such as storage and furniture. This is also a good way to earn some money which you will receive as rewards upon completion.
My first display case that I also use for storage Your Farm and Your Home
Speaking of workstations, some items are just for decorative purposes but others are key to quests. For example, you’ll need a Stone Furnace to make bars out of your ore or glass out of sand. You’ll need to always have coal on hand to keep the fires burning. You’ll probably first start out with a Campfire Grill, like I did, to grill up some fish to either eat for energy or to sell. Then, you can move up to a Cooking Station which is where you’ll be creating dishes out of your crops that sell for quite a bit of money! Both of these activities will take time, but you can queue up to 10 items for each and leave to do other things.
Making glass with my furnace 
My Cooking Station
Gardening & Foraging for Crops
To grow some crops either by tilling soil or making some planters, you’ll need to either purchase seeds or forage. I love how you can harvest items all around the waterfall and forest areas, which takes very little stamina. I mean, free items! Sometimes you will even pick up some seeds as well as the crop which is my sneaky way of gardening.
What I find the most refreshing about gardening is that you can plant whatever you want, whenever you want, in any season. You don’t have to stress out about which crops you’ll need and how much time it will take them to grow. They also don’t wither at the end of the season. The items you can forage however will change with the seasons but you can always find the off-season ones in chests that will continue to periodically respawn.
My plots are diagonal but finally got them straight Tilling you soil is a bit of a nightmare for those that want to perfectly place everything, even with the suggested “Grid Placement”. Placing anything for that matter can take up a lot of time as your cursor will start going all over the place with the slightest movement. I like the freedom of placement but a little more control would be nice. Now back to the crops. You’ll need to water your crops every day unless it is raining out or you have sprinklers! You’ll eventually get a blueprint for them and you’ll be set to let the magic happen! If you have animals, you can pick up their poop and use it to make fertilizer to get more seeds. Poop is actually useful for many things but more on that later.
Glid Placement in Settings Taking Care of Animals
You’ll be given your first chicken coop and some chicks for free after doing some quests. You can easily make chicken feed out of wheat which you can grow and forage or just buy the seeds early on. You only have to feed a chick for about 6 days in a row and then they become an adult. The best part? Adult farm animals do not need to be fed! I love this so much because it doesn’t deter you from taming or buying more animals than you can handle and frees up a lot of your time to do the many other things! It makes every day feel less like a chore and more like an exciting adventure with options. Your chickens will give you either poop, feathers, or eggs (all golden sometimes).
Someone had potatoes on their mind while naming these chickens… Barn Animals
Getting your first barn and cows will be a lot more costly in terms of material, time, and money. This may not be possible to obtain early on unless you make it a priority and save your money. Again, the same applies with calves; feed them hay for a few days and they will become adults. Hay is made out of grass that you cut with your sickle and then place to dry. The cows will give you poop every day and you can use a wooden bucket to milk them.
See that little calf in the corner? 
There’s the baby!
You can choose to expand these buildings to house more animals (I have 6 chickens in one coop) or you can just make as many as you want! Therefore, there are no limits to the amount of animals you can have. Now that taming animals has been added to the most recent update, you can go in search of them and gain their trust rather than having to buy them! When you are carrying animal food with you, the animals’ favorite food will be displayed above their heads such as fish, grass, carrots, etc. In the wild you’ll find alpacas and dung beetles (hidden places), sheep, goats, and even hippopotamus that you can place in barns! Hippos, how cool is that? There are also other animals that you can purchase from a shop later on which will carry pigs for example.
Said hippos looking cute As if that wasn’t enough, every large animal you own, you can ride! That includes the legendaries which you can read about in our previous post linked above. When you have a stable, you can also add horses to them and ride them to get places even faster!
That wild horse will one day be mine! Small Wild Animals
Smaller animals will need specific habitats for you to make before you start trying to tame them. Early on you’ll have access to one for cats and another for rabbits which can hold up to 3 of each. Unfortunately, if you miss a day of feeding them, your meter with them will drop so you want to make sure you have the time to do this consistently. I probably haven’t found all of the forest animals yet but you should also be able to tame deer, foxes, and ferrets that you’ll see roaming around. Normally I hate bugs, but the dung beetles can be particularly useful as you only have to feed them poop to tame them and then they will gather other animals’ poop in their habitat for you!
Ducks by the pond can be tamed 
There be treasure in this pond!
Something that I found interesting was the fact that all animals in the wild will respawn so you can keep taming as many as you want! Some of them also come in a variety of colors: beetles can be rainbow-colored, cats can be black and white, rabbits are brown and white, and sheep can be black, white, or pink! I’m definitely going to tame that cute little pink sheep!
Bunnies love me 
My kitties 
My habitats
You’ll notice that as soon as you tame an animal it will start following you. You need to lead it to its habitat to consider it yours and to name it. I figured out an easier way to do this is not to go all the way home with it but rather you can plop its habitat right next to it. Once it is yours, you can put everything in your inventory, provided you have a hammer to remove and relocate your habitat. I hope this is intentional because otherwise it’s a pain.
Shopkeeping and Selling Your Goods
On your farm there will be a table to place up to 3 different items which can hold a max number of 30 of that kind, and a cute little cash register. You have to go to your sign and open the shop from noon to 6 p.m. in-game and then watch multiple characters come running! These characters aren’t necessarily the ones from your town but I love that you can see all kinds of available skins like the one fox that looks like Amaterasu from Okami! They’ll buy absolutely anything you put on your tables, even poop! It’s a great way to not only make money but to get rid of your unwanted junk. Then you get to watch them scurry off with the item in their hands which I can do all day because it is so adorable.
I wish I could see these little guys all the time! If you have other pressing things to do, you can go into town and “hire” an assistant for that one day! They don’t cost you any money but they will take a 30% cut of your sales. You also have to make sure to hire them before noon so that they will open your shop for you automatically. I’m not sure if this is intentional or a bug but it is not a huge deal since I often go to town. There you can purchase expansions at the Upgrade Table to have more tables to sell more items which will in turn bring more characters.
You get a different Assistant every day Fishing and Bait
Although fishing is my least favorite thing to do in the game as it takes a lot of time (you can sit there and not catch anything) and effort for very little payoff It is however necessary for one quest so far, and to tame cats and foxes. You need fish bait to catch anything at all which can only be found in certain plants that will yield Insects, if you are lucky.
The animals do have very specific types of fish they want so you just have to hope you catch the right ones among several different kinds. You will occasional catch garbage like soggy paper which also consumes your bait. Too bad there isn’t specific areas for certain fish. I used to think old bottles were useless but you needs those for the quest I just mentioned and to catch bugs in them (butterflies and bees). The seaweed you also catch can actually be made into sushi so there’s that. On the bright side, fishing doesn’t take up your stamina.
Mining and Cutting Down Trees
Mining can be fun as you can use your pickaxe on rocks that are found everywhere, or go to town and unlock caves to find geodes and coal. When you find geodes, you need to use them on the anvil to get rocks, copper, silver, or gold. You’ll need to do this quite often so make sure to upgrade your tools by buying them from the Blacksmith. You can eventually make your own anvil at home as well so you don’t have to keep going into town.
Beltran the Blacksmith Cutting down trees or even bushes is what you will be doing the most of in order to make anything. What I found useful is that if you are already going around for a ‘forage run’ then you can often find logs lying around that you can “harvest” which takes up way less energy and can add up quickly without you noticing much.
Seasons and Festivities
It took me approximately 10 hours to complete a season and I’m already in winter of my first year. Yes, that means I put 40 hours into this game already and still going! Time flies when you’re having fun! Your surroundings will change based on the season you are in and, as previously mentioned, different items such as plants and crops will appear all around Florens. I also just found an arctic fox in the winter month so my next immediate goal is to tame it. Winter also has the most adorable decorations like candy canes, wreaths, and gingerbread cookies all over town.
Posing by the tree 
Town Square 
Quest Board decorated
Every season, except summer for some reason, has either special items to purchase or contests. I don’t want to give too much away on this but in the middle of spring you can find hidden Easter eggs all around town! Bring these eggs to the new bunny character and smash them for surprises! The rarer decorative eggs will have better items (I won a sprinkler and clothing) and maybe some tickets! You can redeem tickets for the best of prizes but those darn multicolored bunnies cost a lot! These eggs are very small and hidden very well so I had a very hard time finding them. I ended up only getting about 5 and supposedly there are 20.
Easter in Spring 
Finding an egg
I just wanted to mention that at nighttime, exactly at 10 p.m., you can look to the skies and watch where a shooting-star will land. Usually it is in the forest for me which doesn’t give me much time to return home before midnight. When midnight hits, you will pass out and go to the next day but aside from that I don’t see any other penalties. It can be a nice warp home actually. If you manage to get that shooting-star, you can break it open on the anvil for extra surprises, use it for some quests, or donate it at the Museum.
Controls and Details
Not many buttons are explained to you so it is probably best that you check your Controls menu. You can also remap the buttons of your keyboard and mouse as desired. I figured out pretty late that there’s an “auto-run” button which would have saved my fingers a lot of pain.
Until you get used to where everything is, it is very easy to get lost. Even with a map in your menu. I wish there was a mini-map on my screen at all times. The character names on that map are not listed very clearly and I would like the names of their respective shops there too. Maybe even an overall name for sections of the map so I know what the quests are referring to.
Florens is quite vast! I really love receiving letters in my mailbox telling me if something has changed or if there’s something going on. I want to make sure I don’t miss anything so I find myself running around everywhere to check if anyone has a “!” above theirs heads for new quests. All quests stay listed on the screen and let you know if you have the required items, which is nice so I don’t have to keep clicking around menus.
My grandparents are nice Game Playthrough – Starting Out
Although I haven’t tried out the online multiplayer part of the game, I’m really looking forward to it. You can meet members of the Garden Paws community! With the newly added Creative Mode and some occasional “socials”, it sounds like this could be a blast together! However, for the sake of this review I only had time to do offline single-player. Below you will find a few minutes of gameplay footage from the beginning of the game, as I urge you to play for yourselves and discover everything Garden Paws has to offer! You’ll also see my first holiday and my first taming of an animal. We here at myPotatoGames look forward to more quests, and updates that will later include dungeons and mini-games as stated by the developers!
