Garden Witch Life

I went into this game with very low expectations. Like… underground level lol. I had already read a ton of negative reviews (and there are many), but once I started digging into the positive ones, I noticed a fairly big update that supposedly improved the game a lot. And that was what finally convinced me to give it a chance. I honestly had a hard time deciding whether this should be a positive or negative review at first. Normally, I only write reviews after finishing a game. But I just couldnt wait this time. I am actually legit excited to discover what else the game has to offer. This is a very slow paced farming sim, so I will strongly recommend focusing on maxing out friendships with the NPCs early on! A lot of the story, quests, and unlocks are tied to those relationships, and that ia really where the game starts to shine. My favorite NPC so far is Lily the frog 🐸 And no, not just because she is a frog (although that is a huge bonus haha). Her personal story genuinely surprised me, and in the best way. I wasnt expecting that level of depth at all, and now I cant wait to uncover the stories of the other characters too. Another big plus for me is the decorating system. You can stack decor items, and there are cute things you can do with your house and garden. It really lets you get creative and cozy. Also! and this is importantI usually hate watering in farming games because it is sooo slow and tedious, but here its quick and easy. It doesnt eat up half an in-game day, which is honestly such a relief XD So far, ive spent about 11+ cozy, chill hours in the game, and i genuinely enjoyed them. That said, I personally dont think it’s quite worth the full €20. I would recommend picking it up on sale. And when you do? Look forward to the moment when cute little animals start visiting your farm. You can build small houses for them, pet them, and take care of them.. and yes, its exactly as adorable as it sounds! ❤︎⁠

Initially I really loved and was excited for this game; ignoring all the bugs, the game had good writing, interesting characters, beautiful visuals, and the crystal desert plotline even made me cry -- but then i realized that was it. I finished the game in less than a day. All that was left to do was earn money with nothing to spend it on. There is no incentive to continue playing the game after completing the 7 quests because there are no community events, no festivals, no birthdays, and no more unique dialogue. Also, features that seem to appear in images on the store page are never referenced anywhere else--such as the image of the player using a summonable raincloud to water their plants. There appears to be no intention to add "spells" to the game, or anything else for that matter. The game has recieved 2 bug-fix patches in 7 months. I still want to like this game; the dialogue and scenery are too thoughtful and beautiful for this game to have been a shameless cash-grab, but with the $19 price-tag for a 15-hour max game and absolutely no communication from the devs, I sadly can't recommend this game. As beautiful as the story was, buy a ticket to see Transformers One, instead. I would also like to point out that my run was atypical because i actually found the necessary farming npc by accident, where as many people spend a lot of time being confused before resorting to a walkthrough. My suggestions would be: 1. Seasonal events, birthdays, community events, trigger events, npc to npc dialogue, visitors Add some life to the community 2. Some kind of magic? I know its a big ask but... it's garden WITCH life... The broom counts i guess, but the implication of spells is what sold me on this game initially 3. Long-term rewards There is no reason to keep a save past year 2. Game can be beaten in 1.25 in game years, and there is nothing to show the passage of time or reward a player for advancing. 4. Please, talk to the community. A lot of people don't even know this game ISN'T early access. If you check the comments of the patch notes, people are asking when more quests, characters, areas, or features will be added. TLDR: Cute and fun yet devastatingly short game with no replay-ability & requires walkthroughs.

Meh. I wanted to love it. I really did! It was enjoyable until I had to work hard to save $$ to buy my upgraded tools and once I had done so, they all disappeared!! So I did it again... worked hard to save, re-purchased the gold tools and BAM! The tools all disappeared YET AGAIN! It was so frustrating that I just decided to walk away from it. I'm not sure I will return to this game even if they patch it up. Other factors -There are not many NPC's to interact with. Controls are kinda goofy -like the sprint and walk. This game has so much potential but is nowhere near that point as it is right now. I do regret buying this game.

I have played this game for an in game year and still have quests to discover, friendships to finish and items to make. I have seen some negative reviews and here are my thoughts which are more mixed tbh. (Trying to avoid spoilers). The graphics are pretty cute and the art work is nice. The storyline so far is engaging enough to continue to see where it goes and discover what is going on. What you get isn't heavy on detail or super deep like some games can be so far. There is a basic tutorial with recipes, items and quests are mostly obtained by exploring the world and levelling friendships which is nice, but left me wondering if I was missing doing anything which might be important later on. The recipes are interesting, and I got to see some cool items early on to look forward to making, but there weren't many easy ones (food wise) at the start and buying stuff was too expensive. I relied on making the tutorial item over and over again and slicing it to save money. That said, energy didn't seem to deplete too fast early on. More easy starter recipes and limited access to NPC tools might have improved this imo. As a seasonal game, patience is required to access items and realise what to stock up on to not run out of later. This offers variety and pacing at the expense of dashing around to mass grow / forage / which adds pressure when wanting to progress. One good thing is your character cannot die from falling in this game, which is just as well. The devs seem to like making places with high ledges and sheer drops. As someone with arthritis this made it a bit more challenging. There is a re-location option if you get stuck under water or feel lost at night and cannot see your way which was helpful and reassuring. The friendship levelling needs improvement imo, as it is just trial and error to see what characters like. The clues seem limited and it is not a good feeling to give a resource expensive / rare item to someone who doesn't like it (without them handing it back). Hope this feedback is of some use :-)

I loved & adored every minute I played but sadly it just feels like the Devs completely abandoned it. If u still want some cozy stuff I would say go for it but don't expect too much.

Further growth in game is dependent on friendships with NPC's who lack enough character background to get you attached to them. Which is a HUGE no no for me. Uninstalling it now. Really should only be worth 15 seeing as the map is so small and the in game play is very slow. It reminds me of Harvest Moon in a way where you do you a lot of foraging and running around in the beginning but once you're settled it is heavily a farming and cooking game. Which will also hurt you the further you get a long until you start growing your own trees. It was like they made something stupidly difficult while others in which you would think would be more difficult came more easily in the game (this could be a biased opinion on that mark as I play a lot of games similar to this) Such as leveling up your tools. Its expected to have that be a challenge at a point but, (and the reason I am giving this a negative review and uninstalling) the fact that you have to level characters to what I would say might be their mid range to be able to complete a quest...thats insane to me. The tools (what may be their last upgrade) really hit later in the game. But I would say that if I did not have this having to make friends with the npc's holding the game play back I would have finished it very quickly and this may be the reason why which...No ty. This isn't mentioning the many small issues the dev's seem to be over looking in the game when it comes to small glitches in text between character and npc's and the lack of just being user friendly. Lastly gonna mention the horrendous customization options and its not because there are so few but the options themselves are meh. Also if you do decide to give it a try there is not a lot on The Google about it. You'll find things for sure but it'll take a little longer to find just because what I found is you run into a lot of general over all information. So if your'e looking for something specific just know it may take a couple minutes longer. I'll end on it reminds me of a really badly thought out over priced mobile game.

Can't finish the game - Don't bother buying until there is a proper update This game was adorable and really fun to play, BUT there are tons of bugs including one at the moment where two questions can't trigger, which means you cannot finish the game. It looks like it has been a problem for ages, so not sure if they are going to fix it.

Genuinely confused about the bad reviews as this game is super cute and relaxing, especially if you love gardening/cooking aspects of games. I haven't personally dealt with any severe bugs, just a couple small things that had no impact on my game. The story is pretty slow-going, as you require certain plants or foods that can only be grown in specific seasons in order to do some quests/make certain meals or objects, and sometimes I did get a bit confused on that, but that's entirely my fault for being impatient and not checking the tutorials lol. It also takes time to build your relationship with all the towns people by gifting them things and seeing what they like. You'll get quests from some of them, or unlock more store items, once your relationships strengthen! There's tons of customizing you can do both inside and outside of your house, and all the crafting objects are super cute. The people complaining about not making money quickly enough clearly did not do enough planting and cooking, as this made me so much money, so quickly! Just simply try new recipes, put them in the community box, and wait until the next day to see how much money you can get for it -- continue making those more complex recipes to gather coins quickly! Or make a ton of simple recipes. It is very easy to make money, it's also super helpful to know that [spoiler]the starter ingredients you get in the beginning from May to make cake batter are available daily for you to gather! That's five free ingredients every single day. I rarely had to buy any of those![/spoiler] Overall this is a great game to zone out with, and I highly recommend it if you like cute crafty games.

While I love the aesthetic and the initial story. I have some gripes about the game. I am a completionist, so I like to be able to get all the achievements, and items within the game before I'm finished with it, however. After two in games years the game gets boring. There are only a couple of events on the island, and all the quests can be finished within two in game years and then you might as well just be playing a magicless, storyless farming game with not reason to keep going. My gripes with the game: 1. Over all a very short story. Aside from some quests taking forever to actually complete because a character said to wait a week, or you have to collect an absurd amount of something, the actual story can be completed in a year and a half in game when there is a lot of unanswered questions. 2. The main recipe menu is very inconvenient. I don't like having to spend multiple minutes trying to find the recipe I'm after. Have selection options designed to look like tabs that separates outside furnishings, food, and indoor furnishings would be absolutely amazing. 3. The don't go to sleep with full stamina bug that resets something you've done even after you've saved the game. Big problem with that. no one wants to be told when they can or can't sleep. If it's night time. I want to be able to sleep without my game glitching. 4. the in game events might as well not even be in the game because they hardly do anything for the story, and we don't get anything for attending them. If you are going to put in game events into a game, they need to have purpose, incentive, and frequency. Not having a summer celebration that only happens once and a winter celebration that only happens once. 5. The lack of magic and potions is a problem. Even though I appreciate the realistic take on magic. If someone can fly on a broom, their needs to be spells and potions. There was so much wasted potential. 6. The difficulty in finding all the recopies. I have finished all the quests to my knowledge and been to every place I have access to many times and I still don't have all the recipes. 7. Lacking levelling system. How does the levelling system work because I've hit a dead end and can't even get the max levels so I can keep doing things. Maybe I just haven't done enough or something but there are a lot of missing pieces.

Glad I didn't trust the negative reviews, the game is very cute and relaxing so far and haven't experienced any bugs yet.