Horticular: Build a Garden, Attract Wildlife

It's fine. The pace at which this game operates though is way too slow. The amount of gold required for upgrades, land expansion, buying new plants etc is way too high compared to how much gold you can generally make in a day. It means most of my time playing was spent waiting for time to pass so I can continue expanding. This also created a problem with the missions, as if you'd like to complete the times objectives you'll have to spend a lot of gold, it's glacial and not really for any good reason. The challenge in this game comes from figuring out where to place your props for the sake of creating habitats for your various creatures, slowing how quickly you can create these habitats doesn't really make the game better. A lot of the time, you will just be waiting for the shop to rotate an item you need to fulfill habitat requirements for a new creature. It's a huge roadblock in an otherwise fantastic game.

The idea behind the game is cute and mostly it runs smoothly, but when I try and move a habitat or with certain occurences suddenly the habitat is destroyed, the animal is unhappy and everything is in ruins its quite annoying.

Not even 10 hours in and this is already my favorite game I've tried this year. I got it during the Steam summer sale, but I would have gladly paid full price. I went in hoping this would at least be a serviceable one-trick pony, but it hits the mark or overachieves in so many categories. Its pretty clear the devs have taken a lot of inspiration from games like Viva Pinata, Stardew Valley, Tycoon/City-builder games, ect. but also wanted to make something novel and genuine. Its charming, engaging, sometimes even frustrating in a way a good game should be sometimes. The game design is very thoughtful, the vibes are immaculate, even the story and characters are enjoyable? So many praises and yet I have a feeling I've only really scratched the surface. I've been waiting for a spiritual successor to Viva Pinata, one of my favorite guilty pleasure games since I was a kid, and I think I finally found it. Definitely pick this game up if you are a fan of the games I listed above. Even if you haven't gotten into those series of games, you should try this if you enjoy cozy collection or sandbox type games. EDIT: I was looking at other reviews for this game and noted there were some recurring themes among them. I'll try and address each one, because they all either are resolved by alternatives or likely aren't even a negative to some other people. 1) The spellcasting is annoying/repetitive: This is probably the one complaint I agree with. Dealing with degraded items and sick animals can feel mundane and like forced busy work. Most of the time animals get sick, I have no idea why. It almost feels arbitrary, another thing to keep track of when you are focusing on other things. Counterpoint: theres a sandbox mode! If you don't want to deal with corrupted, sickness, degradation, ect. and just wanna make your dream garden, you can do that. Its like complaining about Minecraft because of hunger or the monsters that spawn at night; you might just be playing the wrong gamemode for you. 2) The habitats are annoying and out of my control: I also thought this at first. Figuring out how to balance/improve a habitat or why a small change I made suddenly made a bunch of animals unhappy was frustrating. Over time though, it made more sense. Its like a puzzle element almost, you have to blend and overlap habitats in a way that make sense, which honestly is a great way gamify the complexity of real-world ecosystem dynamics. It also keeps the habitat goals quite vague at first, forcing you to experiment with trial and error until you get it right, and only being spoonfed the specific ideal requirements once you've mastered an animal. I can see why some might not like this, but I personally love the way they set it up. This is a game after all, you should have to use your head once in a while. 3) I have to wait for things: downvoting this game because you have to wait a couple minutes before skipping each day, or because animals dont appear immediately, or because changing the terrain has timers; its very nit-picky. When mobile games use these mechanics in a predatory fashion to encourage microtransactions, sure I get the complaint. This game is not even close to that though.

If Sim Life, Spore's spiritual predecessor, had been ported to today as a casual game, this would be it! And I LOVE it for that! For this, I give the bumblebee this 🌷 and the developer this 🪙

Very cute, I have so much fun with balancing all the habitat needs and trying to overlap them as best I can while also making it all look nice! Great time! DLC certainly worth it too and Workshop support has LOADS of more stuff too!

It's like Viva Piñata and Stardew Valley had a baby and I'm obsessed