Greenhearth Necromancer

So, I found this game when I was searching for The Necromancer's Tale, and searched on 'Necromancer'. It looked like fun, so I picked it up. It is not very like The Necromancer's Tale. You have inherited a flat from your grandmother, who was a powerful plant mage. You are not a powerful plant mage, you've just graduated, and you're a socially anxious, grieving necromancer. How does a necromancer look after a bunch of plants? But it's not really about that. It's about grieving and feeling anxious and lonely and trying to find your way in the world as a young person negotiating the transition to adulthood and making connections. it is a very kind game, and a generous game and a thoughtful game and it's made in such a way that you think the devs would just be good people to hang out with. So, what do you do? Well, you raise plants. Sometimes in the magical sense. You don't know a lot about them and have to research them, or their pests, or what habitats they like. Sometimes they die, but you're a necromancer, so you can fix that, and sometimes you don't want to fix that because you're a necromancer. You take care of the plants water and light and food and so on, and you can find new, exciting ones, and the plants give you ingredient to make into cool stuff because, well, necromancer. There are people to talk to who might not actually like you for reasons you can do little about, but the game is clear that they aren't bad people, and they all have their own stories that, if you're like me, you'll want to find out about. It's not hugely taxing and once you get the hang of the spells it's not hard but there's a lot of content (30+ hours in and I don't seem to be near the end). What's also nice is 'focus mode', which basically means you can leave the game to do something else and it will carry on for you, which is handy when you have a lot of stuff to research or you're waiting for SPOILER so you can SPOILER. It's just a lovely game and I've enjoyed it so much I haven't even played The Necromancer's Tale yet, even though it looks great. (ETA I have now actually played The Necromancer's Tale, and it is also great. Thank you for attending my talk on 'Games That Are Really Not Very Similar But Do Contain Necromantic Themes I Am Not, Myself, A Necromancer, I Assure You')

This is exactly the sort of game I needed, and I didn't even know it. I'm absolutely LOVING Greenhearth Necromancer. I'm the kind of person who feels like she never has enough time to focus on all her hobbies - writing, painting, gaming, crafting - and then have time to clean in between everything as well. I'm also cursed with the need to jump between everything all at once and ultimately get nothing done, particularly if what I'm focusing on is my writing or my cleaning. I was a big fan of Spirit City in the sense that I could put it on in the background while I wrote and still be "playing" while the game sat idle, but I didn't like having to wait long stretches of time before I could "catch" anything and feel that sense of accomplishment. Greenhearth Necromancer absolutely feels that gap. I've had it running all weekend while I cleaned the kitchen, got some writing done, bonded with my cat, and cleared my desk - and every time I came back to it, whether it was ten minutes or an hour, there was something for me to do. It wasn't overwhelming, there was nothing that made me feel like a failure...just a quick burst of gaming whenever I wanted it, with no harsh consequences and no time-sensitive tasks. I love the game play, I love the stories, and I love the overall vibe. I'll be putting this on whenever I'm trying to get work done! My one complaint is that the controls can be a little jarring whenever something happens in-game and the screen moves from one section to another without prompting, and moving from plant to plant is a little all over the place (I'm playing on the Steam Deck). But while annoying, these aren't dealbreakers for me, and I consider them minor inconveniences in the grand scheme of things. [EDIT: there is now a toggle to turn off Health updates, so the screen no longer moves without prompting! Big props to the developers for adding this feature so quickly!] If you're looking for an idle productivity tool that isn't going to set hard time limits before you can come back and play, this is absolutely the game for you.

Greenhearth is an adorable little game that isn't a game. It's mostly a productivity tool for us people with ADHD. Do some garden, do some work. Come back later. Rinse, repeat... Except that there's no way to play it that way. Too many things go wrong if you're absent for any given amount of time. Suddenly all your plants have mushrooms or aphids. The rate for infection is insane and the curatives brew too slowly to counter that rate of infection. So you're left with just letting them die and raising or reraising them, or simply doing what I Had to do in the end which was take infected plants out of the garden entirely and set them in my inventory until enough time had passed that I had crafted enough pesticide and fertilizer to handle them. Combine this with the fact I can't get to my novice spells (I know there was a bug that was 'fixed,' but apparently I still haven't cast enough spells to get there yet anyway) I can't maintain my plants alive or dead, and this leads to stress instead of fun, and dealing with the very repetitive card events doesn't make this better. There are better options for idle productivity games, you should probably look at those rather then here.

Mislabed as incremental and idler. This is not a numbers go up game that you can let run in the background to progress a bit when you aren't paying attention. The game is more like a visual novel where you check every 30 minutes to see if the game will give you a few new pages to read. Might be a decent game for its target audience, but if you are looking for a typical idler/incremental game for that dopamine hit, this ain't it. All of my hours were essentially me expecting that the game will surely get better or change somehow since it's so highly rated, but that never materialized.

I was so impressed by this game. I would say first hand that this is NOT an idle game. I would call it a semi-idle game. It's okay to leave to idle if you're okay with your plants dying, but leaving it for more than 20 minutes was not okay for me personally. The game consists of lots of plot from people who live in the same apartment building, caring for plants, upgrading spells and daily events. I wasn't expecting the amount of plot in game, and it was really fun for me to learn more about these awesome people. The plants are really cool, especially since there's an undead and an alive version of each one. There's also a lot of strategy involved, as you can combine any spells you want onto the undead plants. My cons: Some things were confusing to me, and took a bit of discord asking for me to understand what was going on. For example, I wasn't sure what chaos meant, and you have to go into multiple tabs to find out what was happening to your plant. I also didn't like the day to day locked aspects of the game. It made me realize this game could take months to play, which made me immediately wonder if time skipping was necessary for me. I would've loved to be able to decorate the patio. The only thing you're allowed to do is change the pots and colors of the pots. All in all, if you're interested in witchy spells and plants as well as idle games and some wholesome community-based plot, this might be the game for you! Finished? No Steam Achievements? Not easy. Could take months. A few at 0.1% completion rates. Steam Deck? Haven't tried, as I idled it a lot. Rating? 8/10 My curator page: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/45865425-CozyAriGames/ Full videos on Youtube

*UPDATE* I have changed my review to recommend after the dev has cleared up my (stupid) misunderstanding of the Focus Mode feature. This will change how I approach the game and if I use that feature or not. Great game otherwise (not that my opinion matters) and I can't wait to see what the devs have planned further. I have left my original review, in perpetuity to my stupidity, below so that anyone reading the dev's response will understand what my initial confusion was. Thanks to the dev for the detailed response! And apologies for the initial bad review. I really like this game. The concept, interactions, and characters so far are great. However, maybe I'm stupid and can't understand or figure it out. But this is a semi-idle game, correct? I cannot get Focus Mode to work correctly. It says it should give 100% HP regen, but after coming back and getting out of Focus Mode, all my plants are dead. It is very frustrating for my plants to continuously die while I have this game on in the background in Focus Mode. I cannot recommend this game, because I cannot let the game idle without having all my plants die every time. If someone can tell me how to make this game work as intended, or correct me if I'm wrong, I will change my review.

It's just one of those games where the premise sounds fun, but there is simply not enough meat on the bones for it to follow through.

One thing people should know: this game is an idle game. and it does not play quickly. most of my hours on this game has been it playing in the background. Lucky for me, I like idle games and this one is wholesome and cute. Worth the money though.

Very cozy, queer, and relaxing. Perfect when I need just an hour or two to relax.

This game is a slow burn. It starts out slow and you have to start learning about stuff so it seems at first like there's not much to do other then tend the plants. But it slowly ramps up what the real goal is and how you are supposed to advance. It really is designed to be played in the background but is very satisfying to come back to pretty often (or maybe I'm overtaking care of my plants) to take care of hte plants (and to eventually advance story). That being said, if you don't mind a game that requires patience (I play it while I'm perusing the internet but you can play it while doing other stuff), this game is addicting. It's one of my favorite games i'm playing at the moment and sometimes I find myself finding excuses to do more stuff at my computer so I can play the game longer.