Cloud Gardens Preview (Steam Early Access)
In Cloud Gardens players must harness the power of nature to overgrow lo-fi scenes of urban decay and manufactured landscapes. By planting seeds in the right places, they’re able to create small overgrown dioramas of brutalism and beauty, salvaging and repurposing hundreds of discarded objects to create unique structures for nature to reclaim.
Pros:
- Nice pixel art graphics.
- 206mb Download size.
- Graphics-fullscreen.
- Gimmick-you find plants and vegetation in a level and grow it to hide the ugly broken down landscape like signs and walls.
- Clear easy to understand cog at the bottom that fills up as you cover the landscape, fill it to pass the level.
- Charming and calming atmosphere.
- Brief simple tutorial.
- You have total freedom as to where you want to plant your vegetation.
- You can move the landscape and spin it around.
- Can click on the birds to shoo them away.
- Find bits of the signage and other items and connect them to the world in order to let the vegetation grow over it.
- A very unique experience.
- All played with a mouse.
- Sandbox mode.
- Scene (level) select.
- Unlock new interactions and abilities like collecting petals from the growths and making more vegetation bundles with them.
- You unlock new props and signage for sandbox mode by playing the normal mode.
- Puzzle gameplay as you need to place the signs in order to cover the eyesore.
- Save when you want.
- Can skip levels.
- Soothing soundtrack.
Cons:
- Nothing is explained.
- The tutorial is so basic it’s basically nothing.
- Judging placements can be tricky.
- No controller support.
- No Steam achievements.
- Bare minimum graphic settings.
Summary
Cloud Garden is less of a game and more of an interactive experience designed to emanate calm and composure. You play as someone who must clean up the planet by placing signs and debris on the scene but then cover it with vegetation and blossom flowers and shrubs so you can grow more. Once you have covered the scene the little bar on the side will flash to say all done and then you fly off to the next scene. New interactions and things to grow to unlock over time and you can find little secret items as you play. The game doesn’t at any point really help you in terms of understanding how to play or what to do and instead opts to just show prompts periodically to maybe assist you. For how the experience is now it’s a very chilled and unique exposure to a new type of entertainment. This is worth your time now and is one to keep an eye on as they are doing something special here.
