It only takes a few hours at most to rifle through the game’s story.
Or rather it’s a game of three quarters with the last shard left for the adventuring. Garden of the Sea is a game of two halves, then. This part, in particular, is a direct nod to The Legend of Zelda: The Windwaker, from surfing along the cel-shaded seas in a red boat to meeting mythical, wide-eyed deities that need freeing from capture via light puzzle-solving. Within the game’s first hour you’ll also unlock a boat that will let you travel to three other islands. What is it?: A soothing gardening game in which you can grow crops, befriend animals and explore the seas. Sunflower petals are used to make storage bags, orange sugar snap pea pods help craft benches and there’s even a shop where you can trade different categories of crops for decorative items. You start off on a grassy cluster of islands where you quickly learn that plant life is a form of currency. This is a simple, soothing palate cleanser to start the year off – a welcome mix of steadily growing a large combination of flowers that’s taken straight from the pages of Harvest Moon with a little Zelda-lite exploration sprinkled on top. It’s sickly sweet, yes, but there’s all enough to let Garden of the Sea melt even the iciest of hearts. The sunshine and rainbows are really only there if you put in the work to get them. But there is, mercifully, some level of depth here too. It’s got fluffy animals that warmly welcome a pat on the head, a blinding visual palette of only the brightest greens and blues, and a soothing reactive soundtrack consisting of subtly uplifting piano chords. Garden of the Sea, as you can no doubt tell, is a very wholesome game. I need a little grit and substance, not just sunshine and rainbows, to offset the wider industry’s fixation on death and destruction. I often don’t fall for games that are wholesome simply for the sake of being wholesome. Read on for our Garden of the Sea review. Garden of the Sea is a hearty mix of Harvest Moon and Windwaker, but it’s only for gamers that want to watch their garden grow.
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