Garden Story is an upcoming social simulator/adventure RPG planned for a spring 2020 release, and it currently has a demo available as part of LudoNarraCon. With a title like that, you might assume it’s a typical farming sim, but there’s actually a lot more going on here… starting with the protagonist, who is a grape.
Concord is a young guardian trying to restore the land. I interacted with a handful of characters throughout the demo, and most of them were also fruit or vegetables of some kind, such as an apple named Fuji and a pickle named Dillford. Some of the other characters are frogs, so it will be interesting to see the sort of variety present in the final game. Anyway, the demo begins with Concord setting out for Autumn Town in order to restore it. You see, the land has become afflicted with a mysterious Rot that is causing problems for everyone.
What do you do about the rot? You fight it, of course! In addition to using tools to gather resources like branches and pebbles, Garden Story also has a simple action-based combat system where you fight enemies. A stamina system determines how long you can run or attack before you need to rest, and your equipped tool determines how you’ll attack. Partway through, I got a couple of new tools, including one that let me retrieve items or hit enemies from far away.
The demo has a limited scope, but it contains glimpses of what the regular gameplay loop might be like. I found several resources I could gather and record as part of the town’s archives, even though there didn’t appear to be anything I could do with them yet. A requests board showed me the basic goals I should try to achieve, and a house marked with an exclamation mark presented me with a side quest (which rewarded me with a better tool once I completed it). Through it all, talking to the characters made me more interested in seeing how the social simulation aspect will play out in the final game.
Your main goal in the demo is to venture into Autumn Town’s sewers. The sewer is essentially a dungeon, with enemies to fight, items to find, and puzzles to solve (of the box-pushing variety). It was a simple dungeon, but enjoyable enough. By the end, I was curious about the Rot, especially since the demo was more focused on a set progression than I expected from this style of game.
Overall, I found Garden Story to be cute and charming, especially due to its dialogue and retro graphics. Some parts of the presentation could be clearer, but it’s nothing a few extra tutorials can’t fix.
