Salad Fields

This is a very well made and quite challenging block-pushing puzzle game. It's full of personality and ideas, and I would easily recommend it to anybody who likes a challenge as well as quirky, relateable characters occupying a mysterious, intriguing world with plenty of atmosphere. Very good.

Weird theme aside, this is a very good puzzle game. I would classify it as a sokoban with a twist that allows you to cast magic spells which control the elements. There are four types of spells, one for controlling each of the four elements: pumplins, skulls, televisions and amoebas. You don’t get all four right away, but slowly unlock them one by one as you progress. You can’t cast spells willy-nilly, but must first fill up on magic charges by collecting these magic crystals found in puzzle rooms which will each grant you a predetermined number of charges. Each spell requires charges from its own type of crystal. As long as you have charges, you can cast a spell regardless of where your character is standing. If you have multiple types of charges, you can switch back and forth between spells with the press of a button. Upon leaving and entering a room, everything is reset and you lose all your magic charges, so each puzzle is self-contained and there’s no need to worry about collecting charges from other rooms. Aside from controlling elements, there are other interesting mechanics which I will not disclose. Only thing I didn’t like mechanics-wise involves the second spell which causes skulls to move. When you try to move two or more skulls onto the same empty space, unpredictable things start to happen, but thankfully this has only bothered me on one of the many puzzles. The core puzzles of the game are those which contain a ‘veggie’. You collect the veggie by solving the puzzle. Collected veggies are used to unlock access to new areas and ultimately beat the game. You only need around half of the available veggies to beat it, making it lenient in terms of progression. Aside from veggie puzzles, there are also what I call ‘tutorial puzzles’. Upon receiving each magic spell, you are made to solve a series of small ‘in your way’ puzzles based on said spell to familiarise yourself with its mechanics. Tutorial puzzles are compulsory, but fortunately relatively easy. There are also hidden coins scattered across the lands. Some of them can be found just by being observant and thorough, while some require puzzle mechanics to obtain, so they are like puzzles of their own. There are plenty of coins to be found, around half the number of veggies. Finally, there are a few secret areas to be found. I won’t tell you how to get to them, but it is a fun process that involves solving special puzzles. Once you’ve discovered a secret area, you can access them freely via the ‘area select’. Some secret areas come with puzzles and rewards of their own, while others are relatively barren and just serve as additional weird places for you to explore. Upon beating the game, you unlock a special hub where you access the post-game bonus content. All but one of the bonuses require a differing set number of veggies and coins to qualify for, but the one free bonus happens to be a cheat code that removes the requirements for the other bonuses, thus making everything free, though you would have to re-enter the code each time you enter the hub. The major bonuses are an area that contains 6 more veggie puzzles, and another area that contains 5 ‘veggie-like’ puzzles (puzzles that are similar to veggie ones except they contain a non-veggie collectible instead). Apart from those, there’s also a special guru you can talk to who will give you clear hints on where to find all secret areas and a hot tip on finding all the hidden coins. Handy, but not necessary as I was able to find them all before beating the game. I found the puzzles all very interesting, barring a few tedious ones (usually involving skulls). Some of them were quite challenging, taking me numerous attempts over separate sessions to complete. While the overall difficulty isn’t quite near the level of Baba Is You, Stephen’s Sausage Roll or Snakebird, I would say its comparable to Bonfire Peaks. It took me 37 hours to complete all but one of the puzzles, including those in secret and post-game areas. That one remaining puzzle is a post-game one that continues to stump me despite my spending more than 5 hours on it. Unless I’m missing something obvious, I would consider it an outlier in terms of difficulty as the others aren’t nearly as hard, even the challenging ones. Anyway, if you don’t feel like doing puzzles or are short on veggies to progress and can’t solve any more of the available puzzles, you can choose to enter ‘exploration mode’ which allows you to walk through any puzzle, including non-veggie ones. While veggies collected in exploration mode count towards beating the game, they don’t count for unlocking post-game bonuses (there’s always the cheat code), but any veggie collected in exploration mode will reappear in puzzle mode as a glowing purple veggie which you can collect as usual by solving the puzzle. Regarding the weird theme of the game, it’s not as ‘extreme’ as I thought it would be. I wouldn’t call it a queer furry game, but rather a surreal game featuring queer furries. Not a big deal is made about the furries’ sexuality, and there are plenty of other non-furry characters as well. You can talk to any NPC by stepping onto the ‘talk crystal’ found near them. They will usually say something different if you step onto the crystal repeatedly, until they eventually repeat the same lines or the crystal disappears, though some NPCs repeat the same thing no matter how many times you step on the crystal. The Conversations are overall weird but funny. Even the references to sex are meant to amuse rather than to arouse. The humour does fall flat at times, but humour is subjective. While I enjoyed the dialogue for the most part, I found it unnecessarily verbose, and it did contain quite a few linguistic errors (typos, misused words and grammatical mistakes). Would have been nice if an editor was hired to not only clean up the mistakes but also to make the dialogue more concise, thus appearing more ‘professional’. Initiated dialogue is also unskippable. While you can turn off the default typewriter effect in the pause menu to make text appear instantly, you still must click through multiple text boxes. There’s no way to skip whole conversations, and that includes the ending cutscene which seems to go on forever. Can’t even open the pause menu mid-dialogue to quit the game. Unskippable dialogue aside, the game does lack some QoL features. There’s no undo feature, which is frustrating because your character moves quickly and makes it easy to accidentally push an object two tiles instead of one by holding the button a bit too long, though thankfully the puzzles usually don’t take too many steps. Keyboard controls are also unrebindable. The control scheme isn’t too bad, with arrow keys for movement and ‘Z’ and ‘X’ as action keys, which is common for Itch games, but the reset function is bound to the spacebar in addition to ‘R’. Used to spacebar as an action key, I accidentally pressed it several times early on instead of ‘Z’, thus resetting puzzles when I wanted to cast magic spells instead. Lastly, the menus aren’t convenient to use. You can’t exit the game from the area select menu, but first need to enter an area and then go back to the title screen via the pause menu. You also can’t close menus with the same key you use to open them. The Esc and ‘A’ key are used to open the pause and warp menu respectively, but pressing them again won’t close them. You must select unpause/ back using the ‘Z’ key instead. Despite these issues, I would still give Salad Fields a solid 8/10, though if it weren’t for them I would bump it up to an 8.5, perhaps even a 9, such is the quality and quantity of the puzzles. The developer is undeniably gifted in puzzle design. I’m sure the game would be more popular with a more ‘normie’ theme. If they make a new puzzle game, I would certainly check it out, though I would appreciate it if the non-puzzle aspects were more polished.

This is a great puzzle game. Going in I was skeptical of whether or not I would like the block pushing puzzles based on my past experience with the genre, but the puzzles in this game are challenging and satisfying to complete. Although the puzzles can be very hard, some have multiple solutions, and once I figured out a lot of them have red herrings it became much easier. Luckily you only need to complete about half of the puzzles at any one time to progress, and if you get stuck you can leave and come back to them later. You can also switch modes to “exploration mode”, which basically allows you to skip puzzles, but if you want to access the upcoming post game content you have to go back and do them, and I never needed to use it. Every few levels you get a new magic power (4 total) and they really push this game from good to great. Each one allows you to interact with the environment in new and interesting ways, and the puzzles really force you to be creative with them in order to beat. One criticism is that although the puzzles get more complex as the game progresses, the difficulty curve seems a little all over the place. Each level contains puzzles that range from really easy to really hard, and although later levels add more magic powers, the puzzles won’t necessarily be more difficult to complete. However, the level design is really creative and fun, and the collectible coins are satisfying to collect and really force you to think “outside the box” to get. The mix of pixel art and 3d models creates a really nice psychedelic aesthetic, and the characters are interesting and charismatic. The dialogue is witty, but if you don’t care about it most of it is skippable. Music is great, and a few of the songs have been stuck in my head all week. Thankfully, unlike Resni’s last game, you can pause and adjust sound, video and controller settings (there’s even a reference to it). If you like puzzle games, surrealism, and you’re ok with or can look past the furry stuff, I’d recommend this game.

One of the most interesting and challenging puzzle games I've played since Baba Is You! Behind a psychedelic, retro art style and simple gameplay loop lay some very clever puzzles that'll push your brain to the limit. It starts simple, but before long, you'll be faced with puzzles that will test your use of every mechanic the game throws at you, the type that make you feel like a genius when you finally solve them. Weird, wacky, and wonderful, this is sure to become a cult indie hit before long. If you consider yourself a puzzle master, let this one put you to the test!

ときどきBaba Is Youよりすごい（かもしれない） このヘンテコなゲームののびのびとした創造性を楽しんでいると、美学と義務の違いを見失いそうになる。パズルをつくるのはデザイナーなのか、美学なのか。Salad Fieldsの野放図なナンセンスから飛び出すパズルは的外れに感じられることもあるけど、模範的なデザイン哲学のレール上では出会えない驚きと、無邪気な美しさがある。手入れの行き届いた遊び場に飽きてしまった天邪鬼は、ぜひこのゲームを遊んでおおいに戸惑ってほしい。

As someone that played and enjoyed MIbibli's Quest, Salad Fields is basically that but a puzzle-game instead of a 2-d platformer. In other words, if you like weird aesthetics, dialogue, and LOTS of dark humor, I'd recommend this game to you. Some of the levels are tricky and can take some time, but at least the required amount of completion for the levels is about half, making it available to players that want to dictate their pace in puzzle mode. Vegetables

this is such a great game, really it's a shame not a lot of people know about it, awesome music, funny and absurd characters, unique mechanics, fun puzzles, and some really thoughtful design, i'd consider this game to be way better than a lot of other games released by well-known developers or big companies, i bloody love it

Wonderfully weird faux late 90s/early 2000s internet aesthetic with creative puzzles and furry characters. What else could you ask for?

I only got this cause resni didn't finish the dimensions game lol nice puzzles tho

非常好的类推箱游戏，总共100多个关卡，包括90多个本体关卡和十几个隐藏关/附加关，游玩时间约20-40小时。关卡设计总体水平很高、视觉风格独特、隐藏要素尤其多，方方面面都远超和它类似的海天岛传说，推荐！