Tiny Garden review

Spanish developer Ao Norte’s Tiny Garden is undeniably cute. Housed inside a Polly Pocket-style capsule, horticultural duties are performed on the bottom hemisphere, while the top half offers a space for personalizing your orb with toy furniture and stickers. But sadly, the enjoyment of cultivating crops and cultivation wears off quicky.

With only a minimum of direction, Tiny Garden nurtures experimentation. Initially, you’ll be given some turnip seeds that can be planted in a grid-based garden with just a mouse click. Turning a crank on the side of the capsule advances time, allowing you to gain seeds that can grow cactuses. In turn, these can produce carrots, and many subsequent crops entail cross-pollination, requiring two types of seeds.

Miniature Ambitions

Expectedly, there are a few complications. Some crops like cactuses will temporarily change the ground, which is ideal for plants that require arid soil. While you don’t have to worry about maintenance, you will unlock tools like fountains that can moisten entire rows of land, paving the way for new types of vegetation.

This loop continues for about four hours or until you tire of the rather repetitive cycle. For me, tedium emerged after ninety minutes. If you enjoy earning new items and accessorizing the look of your diminutive dwelling, there’s probably another thirty minutes of mild amusement. In theory, I appreciate a relaxed game without a fail state. While Garden attempts to motivate with a drip of unlockables and pieces of mail, the motivation to grow increasingly complicated crops was shaky.

Dying on the Vine

Two additional problems threaten to dampen enjoyment. The game’s click-hold-and-drop interface requires a mouse and keyboard. There’s no support for players who prefer to use a controller and attempting to play with the Steam Deck’s trackpads was a draining test of patience. Worse, Tiny Garden isn’t very stable, refusing to boot on two different gaming laptops that typically don’t break a sweating with Gadot-driven games.

Tiny Garden was played on PC with review code provided by the publisher.