The Witch's Garden

Played for a little over 4 hours. The save mechanic does truly work. I was on day 28 and the game even lets you know when you enter the house the game will save & you can't go outside until the next day. This is incorrect. It will save your plants that are already in the garden, but it will restart you at DAY ONE when you return to your "save". It will also save whatever research chapters you've completed, but once again, when you return to your "save" it starts you back at Day One. I would love to see this game thrive cuz I did truly enjoy running around and planting/making potions. Its super disheartening that you basically have only 6 requests throughout the whole game, and then you just guess how to make the rest of the potions. I would much rather like to have potion requests that walk you through making the other potions. Unless this game was made to keep kids busy while you do the dishes, this isn't really a game you'd want to spend a lot of real time on BECAUSE there is no Real progression after you finish the potion requests. The art is adorable, and it'd be nice to play if there was an actual save mechanic and progression, but this game simply doesn't have it.

"The Witch's Garden" is a kind of pointless mobile-app like ripoff of Stardew Valley but with low poly "art" graphics and most of the game loops and narrative cut out... which really makes you wonder what the point is. What do you do in the game? Click on plant plots to grow crops. Heck, Farmville has more going on in it than this does. In terms of visuals, this features fairly low quality low poly 3D visuals which will deter a lot of gamers, understandably. Gaming is a visual medium, and while some developers struggle with creating high quality visuals, failing to do so is a disservice to gamers. It's very difficult to recommend bad looking games. You're forced to sign a highly questionable yet legally unenforceable End User License Agreement... for such a relatively low effort, low quality product, this comes across more as a delusion of grandeur than anything else. This agreement includes questionable requirements that may attempt to revoke consumer law protections that gamers expect to have, which is also highly problematic. Developers must learn they are here to serve gamers, not control them. I had my cat walk over the keyboard while the EULA was displaying, which fixed that problem for me. On the matter of pricing and value for gamers, most "free" games on Steam aren't really free. There's often nasty mobile app cash shops, or content locked behind DLC, or donations being requested, or any other number of shady pricing schemes that could mislead gamers, but in this case I'm glad to say this really does appear to be a fully free game. Nothing demonstrates a developers belief in themselves and their work than giving it away without any remuneration. This is a service to themselves, and the gaming industry, and should be applauded. Of course, just because something is free, doesn't necessarily mean it's valuable, or something you might want to spend your time on. Even though this is "free", it failed to appeal to the 120 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB showed the game peaked at just a dozen or so concurrent players, and now there's basically nobody playing it. Even though it's free. This is a dismal public reception, but it's easy to see why gamers rejected it. Bearing in mind that free games don't add +1 to your game collector count, should you bother adding this to your library and downloading it? Not this time. This isn't worth downloading. While this won't cost you any money, you get what you pay for, and sometimes, even when the game is free, it's still not enough.