Tiny Garden – Opuštajuća igra vrtlarenja

• DEVELOPER: Ao Norte
• IZDAVAČ: Super Rare Originals
• PLATFORME: PC
• ŽANR: Cozy / Farming
• DATUM IZLASKA: 8. travnja 2025.
• POČETNA CIJENA: 12,99€
• RECENZIRANA VERZIJA: PC

Tiny Garden is a relaxing, bite-sized gardening sim where you grow a miniature garden inside a magical, clamshell-shaped toy, evoking ‘90s Polly Pocket or Mighty Max playsets. Blending farming, puzzles, and light strategy, you plant seeds, turn a crank to grow crops, and trade harvests for new seeds, tools, and furniture to personalize your tiny world. With no scores, timers, or game-overs, it’s a stress-free experience focused on relaxation, creativity, and discovery.

As you grow plants like carrots, cacti, or lilypads, you unlock a touching story through letters, uncovering the toy’s history and its past owners. However, the game can become grindy, requiring frequent backtracking, and some mechanics aren’t well-explained, leaving you to figure things out on your own.

Haven For Cozy Gamers

You start with a small grid of soil tiles that grows as you progress. Each plant needs specific terrain, like regular soil for carrots, desert for cacti, or waterlogged soil for lilypads. Some plants change nearby tiles when grown, adding a puzzle-like challenge. For example, planting a cactus turns adjacent tiles to desert, which can block other crops but allow desert plants. Tools like fountains or gnomes also alter terrain to help.

Progression system is currency-free, relying entirely on bartering crops for items. Early gameplay is straightforward, with basic crops like radishes and carrots unlocking new seeds. As the game progresses, complexity ramps up, requiring you to chain multiple plants and tools to achieve specific soil conditions. For instance, growing potatoes might involve planting a cactus to create desert tiles, then using a fountain to make damp dirt. This “easy to learn, hard to master” dynamic makes planning satisfying, though personally I found the mid-to-late game grindy due to high crop costs for rare seeds.

Top half of the toy is a customizable living space where you place furniture, stickers, and color schemes bought with crops. Decorating is a big highlight, with choices like dollhouse-style furniture or indie game cameo stickers, such as Duck Detective or Grapple Dog. A free-play mode, unlocked early, lets those with more creativity decorate freely. However, fancier decorations are expensive, requiring a lot of farming to unlock premium items.

“Easy to learn, hard to master dynamic makes planning satisfying.”

Not Without Its Flaws

Tiny Garden tells a gentle, touching story through letters and collectibles you uncover as you unlock items. The narrative explores themes of legacy, memory, and the emotional value of objects, as Super Rare Games puts it: “Objects aren’t just things, they carry traces of lives lived.” Though not the main focus, this story adds emotional depth, appealing to fans of cozy games with a hint of heartfelt meaning.

The game boasts a colorful, cartoonish art style that channels the playful charm of ‘90s toys. Its simple yet vibrant models and clean textures make everything easy to read. The toy’s design, with a crank and customizable colors, sparks nostalgia, while plants and furniture feel lively. You can tweak the toy’s color, background skies, and plant hues for eye-catching combinations.

It also has some accessibility issues. Sometimes it explains things clearly, but other times, as mentioned, you’re left to figure things out on your own. Without a system to track the production chain or a visual seed tree showing required terrains, you must manually trace each seed’s dependencies. By the time you’ve gathered half the chain’s requirements, you might forget what you were even trying to grow.

“The narrative explores themes of legacy, memory, and the emotional value of objects.”

You’ll Find Something To Enjoy About It

Tiny Garden isn’t an idle game, it demands active play, and if you don’t enjoy cozy games, it might not be for you. But if you love decorating, unleashing your creativity, or spending an hour on a relaxing game, you’ll likely get hooked. The progression system keeps you engaged as you unlock new seeds. However, buying a single seed requires harvesting one to three other crops first. Stretch that to six or seven stages, and it can feel overwhelming.

In the end, Tiny Garden shines as a cozy game, mixing nostalgia with creative mechanics and a unique Polly Pocket-inspired toy setting that refreshes the farming sim genre. However, it’s not perfect. The late-game grind, with costly crops, may frustrate those seeking pure relaxation. Compared to other cozy games, it doesn’t match Stardew Valley’s open-ended depth but stands out with its focused, bite-sized experience, ideal for those craving a short, strategic escape.

“If you don’t enjoy cozy games, it might not be for you.”

Recenzentski primjerak ustupio izdavač

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