Nourish

Personally, I think that this game is really good. It is very difficult and punishing at times, mind you, but in a fun way. The game really feels like it is life or death, with how you have to juggle all of the tasks. It does seem short, with only 25 minutes of gameplay proposed to you in two different modes, but it really isn't that short. It takes longer, but it doesn't feel like the game is just wasting your time. Slowly getting the rhythm down and mastering the game feels very rewarding. One thing to note about the other reviews of this game that are up rn, is that all but 1 were made back when the game was still a demo, and stuff has changed and been tweaked since then. I also think that for the price, it is definitely worth a try. You can get a sense of how the game feels, and if it is for you in under two hours, which lets you refund the game if it wasn't for you, which i think is great. It lets those that like it play for a cheap price, and those who don't think this is their cup of tea can get their money back. You technically don't have to keep playing after beating the regular mode once, but the gameplay loop feels so nice that you try challenge mode, or even playing without the vitals monitor. I could've been done after beating the main modes, but somehow, this game keeps me coming back for more. I think one of my personal favourite things about Nourish is how it turns what seems like a pretty cheap jumpscare into something horrifying. It feels like a jumpscare like this shouldn't keep making me scream 6 hours in, but it does. It has to be because of how the game makes you feel so stressed. The games feels like it prides itself in making you feel powerless. You have to constantly worry about the plant, like its a child made out of glass. "Did i give it enough soil?". "Do i have enough time to go crank the lights before the plant gets too much water?". "Are there any weeds taking all the plants nutrients?". You have to make so many of these small decisions so many times, and you also have to do them quickly, or else you're dead. A mistake or two in the beginning is fine, sure, but the further you last the more you start to make silly mistakes. The slow beeping of the monitor is a bit stressful too, but its not that bad. But when the monitor starts to beep like crazy, and the character starts to hyperventilate, you start to panic. All these things happening at once, you become overwhelmed. You run around trying to fix everything, hoping that you can maybe salvage it, "COME ONE, THERE HAS TO BE A WAY TO SAVE THIS", and then suddenly BAM, you get jumpscared. All that paranoia and stress get released at once, and you, pun intended, get sent back to earth. It works so damn well, the atmosphere in this game is really ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ good. If you like challenging games, with some damn good ambiance, and even a little green kitty, this is the game for you!

I do like the game and it is fun to try to beat the game BUT its is a very hard game difficulty wise. I would suggest do a few test runs to understand what you need to keep everything under control and try to find strategies to be as efficient as possible.

This game has a good concept but it is just wayyyy too intense for the beginning of the game since the game expects that you know what to do just 1 min into the game. There's notes everywhere with long lines of text and I didn't even know you could turn on the power to turn on the lights + the vitals screen until I was just about to give up on the game. Towards the end it gets even more intense than the beginning so you have to pick up the pace quite a bit and the mother fing plant still attacked me even though I saw a bit of fertilizer in with it but it wasn't enough apparently lol. Overall a good idea of a game its just that the beginning was poorly done and the plant itself will attack you even with some fertilizer still visible in the pot with it and say its not enough or even when you turn the water off it will attack you and say its too much. https://youtu.be/LsrNXsQe8XY

I want to like it, I love the vibe and the idea of a horror virtual pet. But it's just way too difficult - not difficult in the fun, "Oh man I've got so much stuff to juggle, hope I can make it work" way, but difficult in the "I have no idea what I could be doing to be better at this" way. It's clear that there's a lot of systems going on here, but some of them are really opaque. For example, you need to turn a crank every few seconds to keep a light on. There's a little battery meter on your status screen, but it can be totally full and your light can still go out - implying that the battery has nothing to do with the light. Adding to this, the battery meter doesn't seem to fill when you turn the crank. But if the battery meter goes to 0, the light won't come on no matter how much you crank? I have no idea what the relationship is between the crank, the light, and the battery, and that means I can't plan for my survival. Similarly, the game seems to want you to juggle multiple things simultaneously, but everything's too fast to make this work. You water the plant by opening a valve, waiting for enough water to be sprinkled, then closing the valve after enough time has passed. The way that works implies that you can do other things while the sprinkler is running, but really it fills up too fast - if you leave to put in a single scoop of food, or turn the crank for one second, you're going to over-water, and... well, you definitely don't want that. I love difficult games, I love a challenging experience. But for a challenge to be fun, you need to know what you're doing wrong, so you can do it right, or at least attempt to. After a half-dozen attempts, I have no idea what I'm going wrong. I'm checking this "recommended" not because I actually recommend it in the current state, but because it's really close to being really good - great atmosphere, good voice acting (the one bit of voice acting I got to from a human character, at least), fun jump scares. If the difficulty was better tuned, and systems were a bit less opaque, there would be some fantastic tension and this would be a great little experience. Some playtesting with a larger group would probably go a really long way. Once some tweaks are made I'd love to give this game another chance.

cool idea and its cheap, but was way too intense and un-manageable to find it fun (also incredibly long - i barely managed at one point and then seeing that there was 8 minutes left was way too much of an ask)