Puzzle Garden

I found each feature to have a smooth and tempered design, but quality of life features are absent or mismanaged; namely, the ability to quickly restart a level. Levels which use the cactus have a limited number you are able to plant; this seems somewhat arbitrary since the number of days already imposes a limitation. It could make more sense where the abilities of a pumpkin could be more exploitable, but since the levels remain the same size and nothing is able to fertilize dry land this feature only serves as an extra reminder to plant them each day, at which point I must wonder why they were included in the level at all. The game has clean Mind-based motivations in place; each element perfectly lends itself to a tight puzzle gameplay loop aside from the central Nerve mechanic: the variable days. This feature strains the puzzle's coherence of design against the player's capacity to internalize it and execute it across an increasing turn time span. Thankfully, the game also knows to not press too strongly on this boundary with such a simple game, only ever reaching a total of 5 days. Producing excitement in the execution necessarily means producing more variability in the preparation. A game like Minesweeper is very simple, and it's perhaps easy to get wrapped up in the idea that simplicity is always best. 14 Minesweeper Variants challenges that assumption by playing with the rules rather than the features. Additionally, it provides a drawing interface for taking notes, which would be a strange choice in most games; puzzles, however, can do with all the quality of life that they can manage, because the reality is people aren't smart, and they learn pretty slowly how to not be dumb. That said, any teacher who blames their student is an awful teacher, not because they fail to teach but because they fail to learn. Incorporating the economy past the score per level would have put this game one step closer towards the hallmarks of Stardew slop, and so I have an unexpected appreciation for the fact that there isn't a cosmetics store, crop upgrades, etc. Puzzle Garden gets an A for Agriculture, Simple yet Enriching.