Garden Life: A Cozy Simulator PC Review
Summary: Get your garden gloves out and top up your watering can... it's time to grow.
4.3
Floral Fancies
As someone who has taken to gardening only really in the last few years… I was quite keen to have a look at Garden Life: A Cozy Simulator. The product image looks warm and inviting and what’s not appealing about a “cozy simulator”?
When you first start you are informed that the previous gardener passed unexpectedly, leaving you with a rough canvas to start your gardening journey on. You make your way to your little growing space, a shed in the corner and a creek with a broken bridge framing the rear of the yard. You have a few packets of seeds to get started and it’s up to you where you want to plant them. This essentially is the core mechanic… plant seeds, harvest flowers, gather seeds repeat.
Each day brings the potential of a new request, be it a bunch of poppies or some sunflowers or maybe a bouquet. Achieving these requests starts simple but begins to get a little harder when the flowers that are requested take a bit more effort to grow… or don’t exist in your collection of seeds yet. This actually brings me to one of the elements of the game that I really liked, seed collection/creation. As your flowers grow, not only can you take cuttings for bunches of flowers, but they will also produce seeds that you can either use to plant more flowers or sell in town. Occasionally you will get a different seed (basically a different colour variation of the plant you are harvesting seeds from). It’s a nice little touch and a bit of a nod to actual plant growing and genetic variation.
For a game that markets itself as a relaxing experience it does seem a little odd to have requests that seem to have time frames on them (they don’t really mean much as they just stay in your “to do list” and there aren’t really any issues leaving them till you are ready). It’s also a little frustrating after a while hearing the cuckoo clock as it forces you to be aware of the passing of time… which seems to happen all too quickly for my liking. Having said that, none of these things strictly matter… you can take your time (it’s just you will feel rushed).
Visually it’s quite a delight, the many colours you can get growing in your garden and the different heights and shapes are quite lovely, there’s also a cat you can befriend… so, you know… bonus points there.
My biggest issue with the game and what totally took it out of the relaxing experience realm is storage. For quite some time I didn’t realise that once my backpack was full any excess would automatically go to my shed. The shed itself has a few different storage areas and depending on what the item is it will go to one of those… ok that’s not too bad. But what became an issue is there is no sorting (or certainly none that I found). I actually took the time on one occasion to try and organise my seed supply (art imitating life?)… I put all the plant varieties together and had spots for each colour variation… as soon as I went out and collected more seeds it put them in to whatever available spot it could (it may stack the same item… but it definitely has no way of knowing you have a section for roses, a section for poppies etc). Given all your leaf cuttings/mulch also get jammed in there, it can cause you to scroll through page after page just to find the new seed you created.
In a similar sense the ability to make/buy plant labels but not to be able to actually label them seems odd. I was going to label all my flower types to make it easier to quickly go to a group of flowers and know if it was the type I needed cuttings of or not… but you can’t add a label… it’s just a decoration.
Final Thoughts?
Ultimately the game is, mostly, enjoyable. I was having a lovely time with it until the two issues I mentioned presented themselves and after that I just got more and more frustrated.
If you don’t mind a bit of clutter and like the idea of setting up your own colourful garden, mostly, how you want to… then certainly give it a look. There’s a degree of story there as well if you want… but it’s really just a pretty flower growing game and that’s about it… which isn’t too bad, maybe wait for a sale though.
About the Author
Chris O'Connor Father of four, husband of one and all round oddity. Gaming at home since about 1982 with a Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Moving on to the more traditional PC genre in the years that followed with the classic Jump Joe and Alley Cat. CGA, EGA, VGA and beyond PC's have been central to my gaming but I've also enjoyed consoles and hand helds along the way (who remembers the Atari Lynx?). Would have been actor/film maker, jack of many trades master of none.
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