Greenhearth Necromancer

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.

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.

游戏的玩法真的很有深度，上手需要费一些功夫。要经常性的去照顾植物。除虫的药剂和肥料都需要自己调制。随着游戏的推进，可以研究出很多的植物习性和魔法还有药剂配方。魔法是游戏中最有趣的部分之一。我们甚至可以巧妙的利用害虫带来的特定法术力量，为花园的整体效益而牺牲个别植物。 游戏在剧情主题上有触及消化失去亲人的悲痛。日常就是和社区邻里的交流，其中不少邻居都是祖母的老朋友。社区还有市集，邻里氛围特别好。选项上可以根据自己的心情来随意地掌控叙事，没有什么后顾之忧。不需要一直对人笑脸相迎，比如说碰到对死灵法师有偏见的人，也可以直接怼回去。整体氛围上有点cozy horror的感觉。 在专注模式下，卡牌会抽取得更快，植物也会恢复。健康状态下的植物还会持续地获取额外资源。专注模式下游戏会自动运镜，展示阳台小花园。配合上天气系统和收音机的音乐，特别有氛围。 虽然游戏鼓励挂机，但是千万不要挂机太久。我挂了1个小时40多分钟，回来一看，植物死了一堆堆。只有3株植物幸存，其中1株还是不死植物。不死植物，其实生命值掉光了也是会死的啦。这游戏不太适合放养式挂机啊。

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.

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

This is a cozy chill game and can feel very emotional at times. I enjoy the blending of gardening and necromancy. Just be advised that it's not a game you grind out. It's a slow game that's good for keeping half an eye on while you watch a show or read. Hop on for 15-60 minutes a day to take care of your plants and move through the story. Normally, I don't like games that are time-locked but this one oddly vibes with me really well, so if you have similar feelings it might still be worth your tme.

It's a fun game: the plant designs are cool, and I like the story cards well enough. The management of the different needs of the plants (and the different ways of addressing the needs, whether through charms, items, or spells) keeps things interesting. I like that there isn't any pressure to react in a certain way to the different cards: as the mood strikes me, I take a narrative path, with a pretty good sense of what the reactions are going to be, but there's a reward no matter what you do. I like having this on in the background, but it isn't necessarily great for a long settle-in session of other work. I keep wanting to check back in 30 minutes or so to see what else has changed, and usually it's a lot. I can see myself definitely putting in a lot of time here. My one nitpick: please for the love of all things, stop yanking me out of whatever it is I'm doing to dump me in a different window to tell me that something changed with another plant. OK, somebody else has a new pest or is in bloom, I get it, but I was in the middle of dealing with the plant I was looking at. When I have a full set of plants in the garden, it gets beyond annoying for me to be checking the status menu on one plant, only to be completely pulled out of it to stare at a full garden somewhere else, with the vague sense of "oh, one of these probably has a status update." Whatever, it's usually not urgent, and it completely throws off my train of thought. It's enough to have the alert letting me know that something's up. And it's worse when it happens more than once in roughly ten seconds. We're looking at the middle garden, nope, the right-hand side, nope, back to the middle. Settle down! I can manage it if you'd just give me some space. For a game that's so laid back and allows for re-dos/reviving dead plants, there does seem to be something a little weird about the forced sense of "thou shalt pay attention to this NOW" - without even telling me which of the 5 plants on the screen is the thing that's currently "mission critical" by the game's analysis. If you're going to pull me out of what it is I'm doing, a living plant or one in bloom had better be at critical health/on the cusp of dying. Again, this is a minor point, but irritating enough for me to want to write it down. Still recommend the game, still enjoying it.

*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.