TENDY: Robot Gardener

Charming puzzler with a unique setting that was clearly made with a lot of love. The art is weird and throws a bunch of alien doodads at you, but in a fresh and funky kind of way that's visually consistent. Don't be intimidated by the isometric "strategy game" style screenshots -- in each puzzle you only have 9 moves to make (chosen from a max of 3 basic move types), so it's impossible to go too deep down a rabbit hole of complexity. The difficulty comes not from trial-and-error, but from planning moves out in your head and grouping them with the "lock" system so that the move you want is available at the right time. Within a group of 3 moves, you can execute them in any order. Loved the info bits that you get when completing in-level tasks, some of them tie back into gameplay, and others give you fun art or background info fleshing out the game's world. TENDY LORE!

CosmOS 9，一个包含9款解谜游戏的游戏包，所有游戏均以“太空”和“外星”为主题。在“剧情”中，这9款游戏的卡带在太空被发现，属于外星硬件，有人在将其适配我们人类的硬件之后发布，这样我们就可以玩到这些“外星游戏”了。这9款游戏分别由数名解谜游戏设计师设计，据称每款游戏长度都在30到90分钟以内，与一些动辄数十小时的解谜大作“正餐”相比，这些游戏更像是“甜品”，既能让人体会到解谜的“甜”，又不会因为长而让玩家感到“腻”。它们展现了多名设计师对太空和外星主题的不同阐释，是一个很有意思的合作企划。 本作《TENDY: Robot Gardener》是CosmOS 9中的一款游戏，由Michael Schmitt设计。在Steam上看到他还参与了另一款解谜游戏《The Machine's Garden》的开发，我没玩过，但看上去有点意思。 在本作中，你需要控制一个名叫Tendy的机器人，在网格状的关卡中完成各种各样的和园艺有关的任务，比如种花、浇水、施肥、清洁。每个关卡的目标不尽相同，但最终总结下来都是这几项。 本作最有特点的还是对主角Tendy的操作方式。玩家在开始一个关卡之前，需要先设置Tendy在这个关卡中会用到的所有指令，一共是9条。这9条指令的分发和执行都不是按顺序的，首先，这些指令会按随机顺序分发，共分3次分发，每次分发3条。每次分发后，玩家才可以以任意想要的顺序执行此次分发的3条指令，然后进入下一次分发。这种随机性和不确定性就是本作最具有特点的设计。 本作作为一个有明确目标的逻辑解谜游戏，引入随机性这一个怎么看都不适合出现在逻辑解谜之中的元素，一开始属实让我匪夷所思。但进入游戏玩了几个关卡之后，我才领会到了这个游戏真正的想法。 本作做出了一个重要的保证：对于每个谜题，一定存在一种指令的设置方式，使得整个流程的可行性不受任何随机因素的影响。为了减少随机性的影响，玩家可以“锁定”其中一部分指令的分发时刻，其它指令还是会随机分发。这样一来，玩家就可以通过选择指令的设置，选择指令的锁定方式，和选择特定一批指令的执行顺序，将不确定化为确定。如果你设置得正确，你就总可以找到一个可以解决谜题的指令执行顺序。这种要求玩家把握不确定的情况中的确定性的设计，属实是十分罕见。 在这种新颖的核心思路之上设计的谜题，先不说有没有意思，起码肯定是很有新意。玩家要确定的不仅仅是“什么样的指令顺序能让我完成谜题”，更要确定“怎么样才能保证我一定可以拿到特定的指令顺序”，虽然总的来看，这些都可以看作是对玩家选择的限制，但是这种呈现方式我是真的没有见过。 虽然想法很有趣，但是本作在“消除不确定性的策略”这点上并没有挖掘太多。很多时候，消除指令分发的不确定性的方法，就只是[spoiler]让随机分发的部分都是同一种指令[/spoiler]而已，这样当然可以保证确定性，但我感觉还是有点太简单了。如果[spoiler]指令分发的顺序真的会有变化[/spoiler]，而仍有方法应对这种变化，那我觉得就神了，可惜本作中并没有谜题要求使用这种更加复杂的策略。但这并不是在说本作的谜题同质化严重，我只是说这一部分的策略有点雷同，其它部分还是十分不同的。 总的来说，本作还是一款有创意、有想法的解谜游戏，可以一试。 结论：[b]推荐[/b]，建议随包购买。

This one took a bit for me to warm up to as the randomness aspect is... annoying, but most all of the puzzles use the exact same lock solution so that ended up not being an issue after a while... and the game is super easy once you figure out that trick, so. It's... alright. Puzzle space is forced to be pretty narrow due to the 9 move limit but the game gets decent mileage out of its concept and there's an element of story that's intriguing to boot. One of the better games in the cosmos 9 bundle, mostly by default, but, yeah. As for the bundle as a whole... it really feels like a game jam that they're making you pay to play. Half the games are either tech demos or just feel... unpolished, and they're all a bit too far on the short side to be particularly engaging. And there's no real cohesion between the graphical design or the controls meaning the whole "console" gimmick doesn't really hold up. The whole set is definitely a bit overpriced and even at the 50% off price point I can't say it felt worth the time I spent with them all. If you do have to get any games in this pack, Triga is probably worth full price, Linelith and IFO are pretty cool albeit a bit underdeveloped and probably worth it on sale, and maaaaybe Tendy and Frequency Dissonance are worth it on sale but those are hard to recommend otherwise, and the other four are either too tedious or too underdeveloped to be even worth your time, so I'd give the bundle as a whole a pass.

This felt like the most fleshed out and unique puzzle game of the whole CosmOS 9. Really fun and weird aesthetic, a very nifty programming mechanic that is easy to understand but still has a wide possibility space. I found myself going back to old puzzles and reworking them again and again to nail all 3 objectives. Well done!

For each puzzle in TENDY: Robot Gardener, you select nine actions you think you'll need, and then the game randomly shuffles them into three sets of three actions apiece. You can perform a set's actions in any order, but must complete one set before executing the next. The twist is that you can lock one set, or one action in each set, to guarantee three actions total. That is, the locked actions aren't randomly shuffled. I have some reservations about this system. In many cases, I was able to progress with minimal restarts by locking the first set of actions to guarantee early critical goals, then selecting actions for the remaining (randomized) six to maximize the chances of being able to finish the job. I suppose you could spend extra time trying to find the lock configuration that guarantees victory 100% regardless of randomization- which apparently exists for every puzzle according to the game- but I was rarely motivated to do so because it often felt like that would involve tediously analyzing various random outcomes. I'm not sure the puzzles are worth that much effort for how simple they are. Strictly speaking, I might not even call them puzzles without the game's main mechanism obfuscating your efforts. Generally it felt more efficient to tolerate a bit of uncertainty. There are at least a few puzzles that want you to lock one action in each set, and I found these more rewarding to solve cleanly, without any uncertainty. I wonder if I would have enjoyed the game more were this your only locking option. Incidentally, I never saw much use for locking the second or third set of actions, though I may have missed something. I also feel like the concept could have been developed further. There are only three action types; you're always limited to three sets of three actions; you're pretty much always locking actions in one of two ways (as far as I can tell). This really seems to limit the puzzles' depth. Overall, part of me thinks there's potential here with an interesting concept, but the other part of me feels like it's a roguelike deckbuilding mechanism shoehorned into the puzzle genre, and I'm not sure whether it's a good fit.

Quick puzzle with a cool art style. Pick a sequence of 9 actions to complete a puzzle. You can lock one row or column, but the rest are randomized. Even with this you can still come up with a plan to solve each one. You don't have to execute the actions in the order they are given to you.

One of the more immediate aspects that interested me in TENDY was the visual presentation. The artstyle is very reminiscent of claymation, and the way everything has a sort of idle animation while standing still adds to this being my favorite game in the CosmOS 9 bundle, visuals-wise. Thankfully, this game is not just a looker. The way you have to manage 9 total rules to beat every level is cool on its own, but the rules are actually randomised, and you receive them 3 at a time. The game gives you the ability to either lock 3 rules to one of the 3 "steps" in the level, or to lock 1 rule in each "step", and it's this strategy element that really stood out to me in this game. It's also very cleverly built, with how there's always a way to guarantee you'll always receive the correct rules to beat a level. Add the fact that you can make some direction choices throughout in this game and you have a very fun and pretty puzzle game. Thoroughly recommended!

very fun and relaxing cool puzzles great music and art buy it's very cool :)

A quick and interesting puzzle game with 15 levels. On every level, you get 9 total moves you can put together from 3 different actions - slide on water, shoot water or shoot a seed. Using those moves, you have to fulfill the level-specific tasks, like planting a flower or watering plants. The interesting thing is that you can lock 3 of the chosen actions down, but the other 6 are randomized. Since there are only 3 different actions, however, the task is to choose and lock your actions in a smart way to finish all the task in 9 "turns". The artstyle is very cool and the game is bizarre in a charming way. Another great game from the CosmOS 9 system.

I really love the graphics on this game since they are so unique and charming. And as for the puzzles, they're all cute and relatively quick. Very very good concept with how you do your moves, though. You have to essentially program your little TENDY by giving it 9 total moves, put into three rows of three. After each row TENDY moves, the other entities get a turn so to speak like a puzzle rpg kind of. However, the catch is that the moves you don't lock in (you can lock a row or the first column to make sure they are where you put them) get randomized, so you have to logic your way out of it! There were only a couple levels where I found trying to figure out a way to best the randomness annoying, but that was probably due to me not doing it the intended way, ha. Overall I loved it!