A Gardener’s Life For Me
As the name suggests Garden Life A Cozy Simulator is a relaxing farming game where you can create a flourishing garden of your dreams in a cozy environment. Garden Life A Cozy Simulator takes place in a humble small village where you go to everyday after taking the bus and returning home by bus near the end of the day. As a lover of farming sim games Garden Life plays differently to those that I am used to and all for the better.
Garden Life A Cozy Simulator gives you quite a bit of freedom in how you grow a garden. When you first arrive you follow various tutorials which are well explained such as planting flowers to removing rocks from the garden itself. The tutorial is a good indication of how the game plays and progresses and gives you an idea of how the rest of the game will play out. The freedom I mentioned in growing your garden comes from being able to grow plants wherever you like and as close to other plants and objects that exist. While this may not always work and comes with it’s own issues, you can still do it therefore it is all about experimenting so that you know what to do and what not to do.
I should mention that Garden Life A Cozy Simulator comes with two different play modes. A story mode which unlocks tutorials and tasks to do and a creative mode which gives you the freedom to create without no boundaries and without worrying about the other aspects of the game.
Whilst you won’t be planting seeds on a locked grid and picking the fruits of your labor straight from the ground and over your head like a Harvest Moon protagonist, you will instead use your pruning shears carefully or willy-nilly on the plants you grow in order to gather said flower. If you are careful in how you shear the plant you will either gain the flower or just the cuttings of the flower. Flowers can be used in a variety of ways, most notably to create bouquets in which you can use in requests that you get or by selling on the stall which is also unlocked early on. By putting the cuttings or the discarded parts of the plant into the compost bin you can get fertilizers which can be used to speed the growth of your plants, herein lies a minor issue with a Garden Life A Cozy Simulator. The plants with or without fertilizer grow incredibly quick. I needed Sunflowers to create a bouquet and as I took the heads of my sunflowers, by the time I went to the fertilizer bin put the cuttings in and then needing to go to the shed to sort my very limited inventory out they had already grew back and that was without fertilizer added to them, I can only imagine how quick they would grow with fertilizer added to them.
You could argue that you don’t need to try and get as many sunflowers as you can in one day just because you can. It’s quite possible that I find myself frantically trying to do everything in one day like I do with games like Harvest Moon/Stardew Valley just because that’s what most people like myself do in those games as a force of habit. Maybe I panicked thinking I will miss something which clearly is not the case.
Garden Life A Cozy Simulator is just that, a cozy farming game that does require a little grind here and there where you are required to create bouquets and fulfill certain tasks, however you are not obligated to complete them in a time frame. You can enjoy your farm slowly tending to it as and when and enjoying relaxing for one or two days if you so much wish to. You definitely can enjoy Garden Life A Cozy Simulator as it is meant to be played. Most of what you can achieve to creating the best farm does require you to do some grinding early on, if you wish to buy the best decorations for your Garden then sure you will need a stall so you can sell stuff for money. This will require a bit of work at the start of the game however.
When plants are clustered together, it can be difficult to see and it can be a bit of a mess to work with. Watering plants can be difficult when a lot plants grow together really quick as it’s not always possible to see where you need to water, the game does not really punish you however, want to start your garden over, sure you can do that, the game can even give you seeds back to start a fresh if you so wish.
So just how Cozy is Garden Life A Cozy Simulator? For me I think the ambience is great, I love the style of the garden and it definitely feels like you are playing in a real world as electric pylons can be seen in the distance while a bus stop sits just meters away from your farm. The village itself you can also visit which looks and feels like a very small French town. It has a nice design and character portraits and voice acting and the weather and sounds add for an immersive experience.
A PlayStation 5 Review Code was provided by Nacon
