LifeisXbox’s Gardener’s Path review | In the world of Gardener’s Path, most of the vegetation suddenly became unable to produce enough oxygen to keep human life possible. The goddess Antheia built 60 gardens to keep life possible on our planet. In this puzzle game, developed by Viridino Studios and published by Ratalaika Games, it’s up to you, the gardener, to prevent insects from destroying our only hope of life.
The power of nature, the power of life.
ℹ️ Reviewed on Gardener’s Path | Review code provided by PR/publisher, this review is the personal opinion from the writer.
What we liked!
- Different Seasons & pixel art | This game looks really nice! There are 60 levels to explore, and every 15 levels, you’ll find yourself in a new season. Every season has their own color palette, which does prevent the game from looking the same throughout the entire experience. I also really liked the particles and lighting effects added on top of these, they gave the world some more life!
- Plenty of variation | To prevent a puzzle game from feeling old and repetitive early on, there have to be new elements introduced throughout the gameplay. And the developers of Gardener’s Path executed this really well; every 5 levels (out of the 60), you get introduced to a new obstacle or enemy. This may be a handy bush that prevents you from smacking into a cactus, or an annoying enemy that blocks your path. Some even affect your movement; the sunflower, for example, pushes you in the direction it’s looking at, or the red Scorpion prevents you from moving into a certain direction when you kill it,… and much, much more!
The game itself felt really easy in the first half, but it became a lot more challenging in the second half. While this may be because of a specific element that gets introduced at that point in the game (see further into the review), the obstacles/enemies introduced later on did have some very neat concepts!
Somewhere between
- Lack of side-content | This game does have side-content, but it’s not a lot. Throughout the game you’ll be able to find fruit, in certain levels. Collecting these will reward you with a new skin, if you’re able to complete the level with it in your hands, that is. Personally, I didn’t really see a point to adding skins to the game, as there isn’t really any replayability after completing the game.
- Enjoyable soundtrack & sound-design | The soundtrack was very well composed to be honest! The main-menu and every season had their own music, and it was quite lengthy as well!
The sound effects, while nicely done, they lacked in amount; there weren’t enough sound effects that stood out – you had noises for the player moving around, for exploding enemies, collecting crystals, and… that’s about it. For example, it would’ve been cool if every enemy had their own “death sound”, instead of the simple explosion that you hear when you kill them.
What we disliked
- No color-blindness support | This is just a personal issue, but when I got past the halfway point of the game, things suddenly became a lot more difficult for me. There are these Carnivorous plants that allow you to be teleported from one plant to another. To have multiple pairs of these plants in a level, they had to be color-coded; red teleports you to red, purple to purple,… you get the idea. Because I am color-blind, I had a pretty though time telling these plants apart, as it was just guessing work at that point. The “guessing” method did end up working, but it did take away from the engagement, a little. Numbers, symbols, or some kind of other indicator (as an option in the settings) could’ve prevented this.
How long to beat the story | 2 to 3 hours.
How long to achieve 1000G | 2 to 3 hours.
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