The seventh episode of a short series on games I discovered at EGX Rezzed 2019.
Garden from Biome Collective was another chillout game. At first, I thought I was going to experience something like Mendel (Owen Bell, 2018) where I’d be splicing together different plants to make something new, but what was presented at Rezzed was more of a musical game.
You could pick up alien seeds – there were four types – and plant them wherever you wanted, multiple times. Each of the four plants prouced their own sound which meant you could make something that sounded quite musical if you did a good job arranging your “garden”. Alternatively you might just do what I did and plant seeds everywhere and create cacophony.
And that’s pretty much it. The visuals and audio were solid although my personal highlight had to be the wriggly alien grass cursor. No details right now about release dates or target platforms. However, Biome Collective suggests there will be more to the game than just planting music:
Garden is a calm, peaceful and beautiful place to be. It gives players a choice about how they engage by combining immersive atmospheric experience with deep strategic gameplay and exploration. The game is not about winning, but achieving a mindful balance with your garden and the ecosystem.
I guess we’ll wait and see.
Interested in other games I’ve dabbled with? Check out the series index!
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It’s enticing to read up on all these soon-hopefully-to-be-released projects. This would have been right up my alley, so thanks for sharing the news. Do you perhaps have any recommendations beyond the already mentioned (slightly related) Mendel?
I’m sorry Rob I don’t really remember much in the way of “growing games” and I feel like I must have just forgotten them. There’s of course Subnautica but generally nothing like Garden. I did enjoy growing trees in Dyson – which later became Eufloria – although that was a sort of RTS game and inevitably became stressful! I did find this link which reminded me of a few other titles.