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A Hero and A Garden
Jul. 31st, 2022 09:21 pmI've been looking for good, story-based games to play on my phone on train journeys recently, and from a list of internet-recommended options, I first picked A Hero and A Garden.
It was described as having a good story (true) and being replayable multiple times because the choices you make have a big impact on the outcome of the game (not true).
It's about a knight who attacks an enclave of monsters, to rescue the princess, who has been locked in a tower by an evil witch. Only the princess very much does not need rescuing and the knight is captured by the witch and forced to cultivate a magical garden, in order to help repair the monsters' town.
As the knight, you need to harvest berries from different bushes in the garden, to fulfil orders from different residents. This leads to lots of interactions with the monster citizens, during which the knight learns that monsters are people too and he really needs to do some serious penance for the damage and harm he has caused.
The story is fun, the graphics are cute, and I enjoyed the conversations with the different characters and how their relationships with the knight progressed over time. But there was only one actual choice to make - right at the very end of the game, which would have provided briefly different endings.
Plus, the gameplay was practically nonexistent. When cultivating the garden, you have to click on the bushes to collect the berries. As soon as you have enough of one type, the relevant character turns up to collect them and an interaction ensues. This was fine when orders were coming in for all the different types of berries, as it didn't take long to fulfil an order.
However, as the game progressed, the number of berries required went up and up, and eventually several of the customers stopped turning up. Towards the end, I only needed to collect the slowest growing berries, which took a very, very long time...
Still, overall, it was quite fun and I did like the way the interactions developed over the course of the entire game.
It was described as having a good story (true) and being replayable multiple times because the choices you make have a big impact on the outcome of the game (not true).
It's about a knight who attacks an enclave of monsters, to rescue the princess, who has been locked in a tower by an evil witch. Only the princess very much does not need rescuing and the knight is captured by the witch and forced to cultivate a magical garden, in order to help repair the monsters' town.
As the knight, you need to harvest berries from different bushes in the garden, to fulfil orders from different residents. This leads to lots of interactions with the monster citizens, during which the knight learns that monsters are people too and he really needs to do some serious penance for the damage and harm he has caused.
The story is fun, the graphics are cute, and I enjoyed the conversations with the different characters and how their relationships with the knight progressed over time. But there was only one actual choice to make - right at the very end of the game, which would have provided briefly different endings.
Plus, the gameplay was practically nonexistent. When cultivating the garden, you have to click on the bushes to collect the berries. As soon as you have enough of one type, the relevant character turns up to collect them and an interaction ensues. This was fine when orders were coming in for all the different types of berries, as it didn't take long to fulfil an order.
However, as the game progressed, the number of berries required went up and up, and eventually several of the customers stopped turning up. Towards the end, I only needed to collect the slowest growing berries, which took a very, very long time...
Still, overall, it was quite fun and I did like the way the interactions developed over the course of the entire game.
