Mothergamer Plays Garden Buddies

I thought Garden Buddies looked very cute just from the short trailer I watched. I did pick it up when it was on sale for about two dollars on Nintendo Switch. Let's say I'm glad I didn't pay full price. Let's get into what works for this game and what doesn't. 

Garden Buddies setup for the story is pretty easy to follow. You meet an adorable apple character Mutsy who explains to you that you're going to work together to make a lovely garden for him and new friends to relax in and have dance parties. This opens up the tutorial showing you how to place bouquets of various flowers. The flowers also act as currency for placing furniture items like a tree swing. I played in story mode, but there is a free build mode for playing around and creating your own garden designs. 

Meeting Mutsy in the garden. 

In story mode you design the garden with Mutsy a bit and then you take breaks to help him welcome new friends to the garden. This introduces several mini games as well like starting a dance party. It's like Simon Says and you have to push the button prompts to dance. There's a bug catching game and a few others that are quite fun. 

Dance party! 

The main story is over the course of five days and Mutsy meets a new friend each day. They're all quite adorable and my personal favorite was a cute bat named Betty. At the end of each day Mutsy goes over the events of the day with you and there's a lovely moment of taking a break and doing a breathing exercise with Mutsy. It's a nice and gentle reminder to take a moment for yourself and just allow yourself to be. 

We meet Betty. 

Now we get to the not so great thing about Garden Buddies. The main story is not very long, about 91 minutes which is not a bad thing. I've played plenty of short and sweet games. However, for a game this short there should not be as many issues with crashing as there were. I wasn't very far in when I had my first game crash. I closed the game and rebooted and it crashed in the same spot. I tried out other games on my Switch to make sure it wasn't the console itself that was the problem. It wasn't, but I did a hard reboot to be sure. I also uninstalled and reinstalled Garden Buddies. It did work for a bit, but I found I had to skip some of the mini games because again the game would crash. I did some digging and it doesn't just crash on Switch, it crashes on Steam as well. The game isn't that new, but it's frustrating when you're trying to just enjoy it and it has all these crashing issues constantly considering that it doesn't take up that many resources. 

Other than the crashing issues, Garden Buddies is a very cute and relaxing game when it works. 91 minutes for this type of game isn't bad and the concept, art style, and characters are all very cute. I do wish there was a little more to it, but overall it's a lovely game. If the developers can sort out the crashing issues that will make it even better. As I said, I'm glad I didn't pay full price for it. 

Making a nice garden.

*Garden Buddies is on the following platforms: Nintendo Switch and Steam 

*Join the Mothergamer community on Switch as we play games and discuss mental health: https://www.twitch.tv/mothergamer

Mothergamer Plays Tempopo

 Tempopo introduces us in a very cute way to Hana and her garden of  musical flowers. Hana attempts to have a concert, but things go horribly wrong and her flowers are scattered everywhere. With the help of her magical Tempopo friends that resemble adorable pink flower seeds, Hana can rescue her flowers and bring them back to her garden.

Hana and her musical flower garden. 

Right from the start I genuinely liked Tempopo. It's a musical puzzle game, but it's not terribly frustrating because it's obvious they did have kids in mind with the puzzle designs, the bright colors, and the whimsical music. The game has three difficulty modes: puzzle mode, challenge mode, and adventure mode. 

I'm not the best at puzzles even though I like them, so adventure mode and having hints was great for me. The free moving camera is helpful because the puzzles themselves are basically 3D so you can rotate the camera around the puzzle to see hidden corners or a path you may have missed. The goal for each puzzle is for Hana to conduct where the Tempopo go to safely rescue the flowers on the puzzle map. If one route doesn't work, you can reset and try again. I appreciated that there's no rush, no timer, so I could take my time figuring out each puzzle. It does slowly get a little more challenging and a bit more complex with each puzzle, but not too much so I was never overwhelmed. Once Hana successfully rescues her flowers, she can start placing them wherever she likes in her garden. 

One of the many puzzles. 

The music in Tempopo is lovely. Each area seems to have its own song that matches the rhythm of the flowers and the spirit of the poppy, bright colors. The game has 60 puzzles to solve and no two were exactly alike. Each puzzle had its own unique pathing, music, and I was invested in each one. When you finish an area and are ready to move onto the next one, there's fantastic art showcasing each area done by various artists. My personal favorite was called Full Moon by Jessica Smith because it's this delightful whimsical picture of Hana in the nighttime sky with magic jellyfish. 

My favorite art in the game. 

Tempopo isn't a terribly long game. I took my time with the puzzles using a lot of trial and error until I could rescue all the flowers and have a concert with all of them. For the main story it's about 5or 6 hours to complete. There is also a fun free build feature in the form of Melody Garden which is unlocked after you complete the Spring section of the game. You can arrange the flowers and test out how they sound. For example, the roses can sing while jazz flowers can make flute or saxophone sounds. You can play around with this as much as you like and create your own songs and arrangements in the Melody Garden and it's a lot of fun. 

Tempopo is a great indie puzzle game that is accessible for people of all ages to play from adults to kids because of its enchanting artwork, the gameplay, and just the fun you can have solving puzzles and then making your own music with the flowers. It's delightful to play and doesn't overstay its welcome. 

Hana and her rescued flowers. 

*Tempopo is available on the following platforms: Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and Steam 

*Join the Mothergamer community on Twitch where we play games and discuss mental health: https://www.twitch.tv/mothergamer