The Abbess Garden - we tried our hand at gardening

Gardening is something I have never done, which is exactly why I found the game interesting. In an attempt to juggle two genres in one, it remains short, but that does not mean that there are no good sides to show.

The Abbess Garden is available on Steam and Steam Deck. The game was developed by MD Studio, while the publisher indie.io provided the code for the purposes of this review.

GAMEPLAY

Agnès is our protagonist who is in charge of a garden where no one has set foot in for years. He has complete freedom as to how he will arrange it, where exactly he will plant the plants, which flower he will reward with water first. We have the typical things available when someone mentions gardening. Digging, watering, adding fruit, etc. It all sounds fine, the concept is spot on, but where the game loses me is in the presentation of gardening. As I mentioned earlier, the game revolves around two genres, in the garden we are in a 3D world where the graphics are not up to par, but considering that it is an indie studio, I will refrain from criticizing a lot.

The controls are a bit clumsy, although the game offers an option to speed up walking, I never felt it reached a satisfactory enough speed for the heroine to reach the plants to check them with her magnifying glass. The plants will call you by lighting up, then check what they need. By glancing at the notebook she carries with her everywhere, Agnès can see which missions she has to complete. This is where the controls become an additional problem, simply when you want something to happen, the game doesn't listen to you. The system works without much depth. The game doesn't allow you to do more than one thing, once you start something you have to watch the animation until the end. It's frustrating to me that there isn't a ribbon indicating how far it is, it would be much better and more efficient if you could do more than once. It's positive for me that as the story goes, we go through all the seasons.

On the outside of the garden, we are presented with a small part of the French city, where the game switches to the novelistic style of the 2D world. I liked and liked this part (with flaws), and when I imagine the whole game in this format, I think it would be much better. Agnès meets various characters with whom she interacts. Each of them has their own wishes and ways of hiring a gardener. Additionally, we unearth a diary that belonged to a spy, which if it ends up in the wrong hands, can make everything difficult for the French government. Although it sounds scary, the game never goes beyond its limits. At its heart, it remains a small indie game, which wants to relax you while you take care of your plants. The interaction with the characters is made in such a way that you observe everything that happens in front of you. The story did not draw me in deeply, it was even boring in parts. Perhaps the culprit is the time period and the fact that the focus is on wartime tensions. Despite the fact that I feel that this novelistic part of the game is much better served, it used to take too much away from the gardening offered as the essence of the game. Throughout the game, I asked myself, what is the real goal? The answer is both, but the game could have done it better. It would compliment the style of this 2D world, the game shows the colorfulness of the plants, the outlines of the characters and the city through the drawings.