Review | Garden Story - Ripe and in Season

The Game Boy Advance is an incredibly special console to me. As a wee baby, I would put hours upon hours into staring at that poorly lit screen and it’s incredible selection of games. I played through Pokémon Ruby countless times, had multiple save files in Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga, collected all of the powerups in Kirby and the Amazing Mirror. The games were colourful, the scores were impeccable, they were huge, expansive worlds all in my tiny and maybe sometimes greasy hands. And now with Garden Story, I feel like I got to relive those wonderful memories of my childhood for the first time in years.

Link would be an excellent neighbour. Kind, quiet... GOOD WITH A SWORD!

Garden Story was solo-developed by Picogram, and if it wasn’t clear by the look of the game, the GBA Zelda influences were very purposeful. When I booted up the game, my mind immediately jumped to the opening of The Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap. Both games start with a serene score detailing the events of the world, using still images to illustrate the story. With Minish Cap being one of my favourite Zelda titles, I had a feeling that Garden Story would be exactly the game I needed right now.

In Garden Story, you play as quite literally the perfect protagonist: an anthropomorphic grape called Concord. Yes, I did cry every time I booted up the game just at the sight of his perfectly spherical body. The world you inhabit, The Grove, is struggling to fight beings known as The Rot. Your local community, called Hamlet, and the neighbouring towns and villages, are all struggling to survive. And you, the youngest Greenling in the Hamlet, has been tasked with helping everyone you can.

HERE TO HELP!

It’s a scary situation for a tiny fruit person, but thankfully you’re given the tools you’ll need to start fighting back. The start of the game sees you completing different kinds of tasks with these tools to help out the Hamlet - sometimes you have to fight the Rot with your trusty pick. Other times, you just have to repair a fence with your hammer and your cunning. And sometimes, you just need to collect some materials to help another fruit or veg build something. 

Completing the various tasks serve different purposes - some will go towards you being able to find more resources to use in the town, others will help the local shops to stock-up on tools for you might need later. They’re simple gameplay loops that often do not rely on combat, and they never take too long to complete either. It is a nice Stardew-equse feeling of always running a variety of errands to help your community.

Fishing is a form of combat, right?

Sometimes though these quests will require Concord to fight. The combat itself is pretty good too, although not often particularly challenging. Early on in the game, I found myself a little frustrated with fighting. I felt like the pick didn’t have quite enough range, and the stamina system being tied to both swinging your weapon and dodge-rolling was  a little cumbersome. However, as my stamina increased and I gained a wider range of weapons, these problems became negligible. 

The pixel art is exemplary throughout the whole game. None of the characters have particularly complicated animations, but their designs are so simple and charming that it doesn’t matter. One of the most exciting things about going to a new town was seeing all the different kinds of fruit and veg people there were to be found. Surprisingly for a 2D game, there were slight dips in framerate in simple areas like Autumn town, yet not in areas that seemed like they would be particularly intensive for the Switch. It didn’t matter too much though, as these dips never happened during combat encounters. The exceptional art is served so well by the whimsical score from Grahm Nesbitt. I even caught my partner humming along to the score to the charming score as I played.

So, when you said I should read up on how to deal with weeds…?

Those early tasks do a great job of setting up what you’ll be getting up to in Garden Story. It also very quickly tells you what the game is about: you are here to help your community to survive some truly difficult times. It is very apparent, quite quickly that the game is essentially an allegory for climate change. This point isn’t even really debatable - the credits of the game offer a link to the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center, an organisation focused on addressing climate change.

Discussions of climate change are something we rarely, if ever, see in games. I don’t think I’ve ever played a game that explicitly mentions it, not to mention tries to tackle it in its subject matter. And while there are plenty of games with apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic settings, there are hardly any high profile titles that want to directly acknowledge what caused the world to end. As I spent more time with Garden Story, I of course wondered if the game was really about climate change or if I was reading too much into things - and then to see the link provided in the credits, for the game to say “yes, the world is facing a horrible challenge and we need to do something about it” was refreshing, and honest. But what I loved most is about how the game framed the actions we can take in the situation we’re in.

While you start off in the Hamlet, you eventually venture to other villages, themed around the four seasons. Those side missions you can complete can be found in other villages, with minor variations on each kind of task to be found in each village, changing  as you unlock new tools. You get to work with the people of each village to make their overall quality of life better. It might be helping to find the resident architect, so they can work on rebuilding the town. Or you can help clear out the sewers to help with what is essentially a pollution problem.

LOOK AT THIS FRIGGIN’ DUDE!

You help in small but productive ways. You’re not curing the sickness, but addressing some of the symptoms. Towards the end of the game things do get a bit more “big picture”, but the onus of global change, and the blame for disaster is never on you or any individuals just living their lives in . Solidarity with those around you, surviving with them as best you can, is what the game wants you to do. It’s not always easy, either. With some of the people of the world, you have to prove yourself, as tiny and young a grape as you are. But as tough as things are, Concord is a beam of positivity. They constantly prove themselves to those who doubt them, and show everyone that change is possible.

Ultimately, Garden Story shows that a better world is possible. Not one where everything is solved, but where things are more manageable. We can nurture the little bit of health that still exists in the world, and we can be there for those that need it most. The RPG-like elements that reminded me of the GBA games of my youth are all still just as endearing as I remember them, and honestly, I think in another world you could find Garden Story on the little handheld. For this small game to capture that magic, and for there to be an important story about community on top of everything else, it makes it a really special experience.