Garden Story is an action adventure game by Picogram. You are a young grape named Concord, a gardening greenling who is thrust into greatness when they become the newly appointed Guardian of the Grove. As a Guardian, Concord must protect the Grove’s inhabitants from a chaotic presence called Rot and help rebuild the town to unify the broken community.
The game is divided into in-game days, which have larger main objectives that push the narrative forward, as well as daily requests that improve a town’s level. Completing requests sometimes ties to the main objective and also improves the offering of tool upgrades available for purchase. Gameplay is split into three unique challenges: defend, build, and forage, which are combat, building, and collection-focused tasks respectively. A regular need to backtrack slows down the pacing, but having clear objectives made me feel like I was making consistent progress.
There is a lot to love about Garden Story, despite its minor flaws. The wonderful work of Grahm Nesbitt on the delightful soundtrack and effects enhances Picogram’s charming art, design, and polished programming to create an experience that evokes a fun time of thrills and chills.
Garden Story launches today on Nintendo Switch as well as PC and MacOS via Steam for $19.99.
Watch our full Review in 3 Minutes for Garden Story.