Review: Garden Life: A Cozy Simulator plants the seeds of calm serenity

Garden Life: A Cozy Simulator is one of the first games that ever caught my attention after opening up Comfy Cozy Gaming. So, it’s safe to say that I’ve been excited about this since CCG’s inception.

The colors and vibe of this game are super cozy. After getting to play some of it, I can confirm that I was right to be hyped about it back in November when I first wrote about it. 

Gameplay

The game itself is quite simple in that you have only two locations – the garden and the village. Each day, you pop up at the bus station that sits across from a garden. Initially, it’s abandoned and entrusted to you in the absence of the previous caretaker.

A woman named Jasmine introduces you to all the basics and walks you through the paces of how to plant and take care of flowers as well as the different functions of tools and storage. Ultimately, our goal is to bring back the vibrancy of what the garden once was and fill orders for flowers along the way.

It’s only as the days progress that we learn that the previous caretaker has passed away. You’ll meet Leslie who runs the boutique where you can buy tools and seeds and you’ll meet Laurie. She’s the sister of the previous caretaker and she only bids that you take care of her sibling’s legacy. 

Honestly, I wasn’t expecting to be visited by a ghost at this point, but I was thoroughly amused when a spectral rendering of Robin – the previous gardener – popped up on screen. The language here is very carefully gender-neutral. So, I’m led to believe that they were Non-Binary, which is a lovely, inclusive detail to add.

Robin really only has one request, take care of the garden and finish their “To-Do List”. It’s a pretty simple list, but your hands will be full of cultivating at the early stages of the game.

There are two more characters in this game. But, unfortunately, my save files decided to run away from home and I wasn’t able to pick up where I left off. I talk more about this later. 

From there, my days were pretty much spent trying to fill orders – especially a particularly big one that I needed to fill to open up my stall. You’ll want to prioritize getting that Stall built too because the one downside to this game is that storage is not nearly big enough for the number of different drops this game gives you.

Opening your stall is literally the only way to destash. 

Later on in the game, I believe that you’ll be able to help with bigger projects. I just wasn’t able to get there before this review. 

Additional Content

There’s a “Supporter Pack” that you can buy either as a bundle separately if you already have the main game. Alternatively, it’s also called a “Party Pack” and it includes two new exclusive flowers – a Gerbera and Pansy – as well as several different types of decorations. 

This pack gives you “elegant decorative items”, cute lanterns to decorate your garden, hanging pots, and balloon objects/structures like balloon arches. Not only are all of these items unique to the pack, but each of them can be colored to your choosing by using the paintbrush you can buy from Leslie’s Boutique. 

Happily, I checked the Steam listing before posting and found that there is another little DLC pack available currently that is called Eco-Friendly Decoration Set. It offers a “greener” aesthetic to your garden with eco-friendly pots, lanterns, tables, chairs, fairy lights, and even a darling Tea Kettle Fairy House that I feel I must have. This pack is $2.99. 

Sound and Art

This game is so mind-bogglingly beautiful that I’m literally upset my computer can’t handle it. I can’t imagine how much more enjoyable this game would be if I didn’t have to have my settings ramped to the lowest option. And yet, even with things scaled completely down, Garden Life: A Cozy Simulator is still a gorgeous game.

No attention to detail was spared. The design of the flowers, the environment, the village, and especially the characters have so much life in them. This game is a visual joy to behold.

As far as music goes, it’s fine, but I think it’s too distracting at 100% volume. If you drop it down to 20%, it’s perfect as a soft background accompaniment to the sounds of nature. 

Not only do we get music and sounds, but the characters are all voice-acted. It was really fun to hear accents and cadences from the NPCs. Unfortunately, I only heard from Jasmine, Robin, Laurie, and Leslie. There were two characters that I didn’t even get to in my hours of gameplay before my savefiles blipped away. I talk about that in the next section and why I don’t think you will have that same problem.

Coziness and Cons

As far as coziness goes, this is a super chill and relaxed game. You plant and care for your flowers, manage orders, and try to fulfill some ghostly requests from Robin. The only time I felt anything verging on frustration was when I ran out of inventory space for seeds and flowers. 

Pro Tip: Don’t plant flowers you don’t need immediately. Wait until you have a stall or you’ll probably be in the same boat I was shuffling things around. Unless it was just a bug, things that don’t fit in your inventory will not be dropped on the ground. One of my color variations blipped out of existence since there was no room left. 

Once you get in the groove of things, it’s really relaxing. I think the weather effects definitely help and I like that people don’t physically show up in the garden. It really is just you and the plants… when there’s not a ghost trying to talk to you. But, that’s more a pop-up than an actual avatar.

The only unfortunate thing is that you might find it a little repetitive after a while. But, even when I was doing the same thing for one massive order day in and out, it was still a lot of fun.

As for cons, as mentioned, the inventory space isn’t the best. I thought planting all the different flowers that I could right from the start was a great way to get ahead on things. It wasn’t. Not only do the plants drop flowers, but you also get veritable weeds from cutting plants that fill your inventory. And that doesn’t include when plants have seeds to harvest. 

The inventory is the only real con that I can say for a fact is a challenge. My other qualms are likely fixed bugs by now. I played early, so you can generally expect some issues with a beta version. For instance, when you’re in town and you head back to the garden, you’ll be prompted to leave to return to the garden. In this bug, I was able to keep on walking beyond the prompt point and straight off the map.

Honestly, it was pretty cool to see behind the buildings. But, it was kind of a pain to find a way back. I accidentally got an achievement for reaching the tallest point of the garden while trying to get back. Whoops.

The last thing is sad, but not a dealbreaker. At some point, my save files were poofed from the game. I’m not sure if that was a bug. But, it’s more likely that it happened when my game changed over from the beta version. Because of this, I’d have to start over to test whether the village bug is still there.

Sadly, I don’t have the time just yet to replay 4 hours of a game to get back where I was. But, I’m actually fine with restarting. I can’t say that for a lot of games. 

Garden Life: A Cozy Simulator Verdict

I mentioned some cons in getting back behind the facade of stores and losing my game save. But, I truly think these things are all down to the beta version of the game and so they haven’t swayed the overall score that much. You shouldn’t have any problems, but just in case you do, they’re mentioned.

In saying that, Garden Life: A Cozy Simulator delivers on its namesake. This game is beyond cozy. So cozy, in fact, that I don’t even really mind that I need to restart my save. That gives me a better chance to plan my garden and not go all in on seeds in the early game.

I loved being able to do things at my own pace. Instead of being annoyed by the daily tasks of watering and spraying for bugs, it all blended into a comfy little routine that I was happy to fall into as I worked on orders and waited for new seed colors to manifest.

You absolutely will not regret Garden Life: A Cozy Simulator. Even if you have to drop your graphics to the lowest settings like I did, you’ll still be enchanted by this game.

If you want to get Garden Life: A Cozy Simulator for yourself, you can get it on Steam for $24.99 or on Nintendo Switch, Playstation, and Xbox for $39.99. 

The DLC for the Garden Party Pack is available on all consoles for $6.99. The newly released Eco-Friendly Decoration set is available for $2.99. 

If you’re tired of garden and farming sim-type games, you could go on a little adventure with a game I’m always happy to recommend. Smushi Come Home is a true delight and if you haven’t checked out our review of it, you absolutely should.