Have you seen those whackadoo adverts for mobile games where the sedate match-3 mechanics are apparently just the coat of paint on a story about your man-murdering grandma? Well, it looks like Wylde Flowers took the idea of "cute game + grandma with dark secrets" and ran with it, as you can see from the trailer above.
The first half of the trailer shows the protagonist learning to craft, farm, and meet all the locals, but the second half exposes granny's underground wizard cult. You can seemingly use magic to aid in your plant-growing, animal-rearing lifestyle... and maybe even help you out with dating. A host of "interested parties" are ready and willing to take you on picnics and eventually marry you, so you may not even need magic after all.
The game is fully voice-acted, including the voices of Valerie Rose Lohmann (Edith Finch, What Remains of Edith Finch), Ray Chase (Noctis, Final Fantasy XV), and Cissy Jones (Delilah, Firewatch), and is being made by a female-founded studio in Melbourne, Australia called Studio Drydock. Wylde Flowers will be coming to the Nintendo Switch eShop later this year.
Comments 16
Hmm… was the article’s subtitle meant to be “Magic: The Gardening?”
...Whooo, another mobile game with that irritating and common art-style...
That... actually looks really cool. The character models are a bit odd but that's probably personal taste. Other than that, looks very promising.
I play games to ESCAPE from my reality of being constantly nagged by my grandmother to join her wizard cult, so I think I'll pass on this one.
The game is decent, and is currently on Apple Arcade. It's not something that is really deep, though. But enough fun to keep you coming back.
It depends on the price they are going to ask for it.
The game seems to have good reviews so hopefully people don’t diss it because in their words “it looks like a crappy mobile game”
(What happened to the good old days where you can make a game with a chibi artstyle without it being accused of being a mobile game?)
@Greatluigi It is a mobile game though. It's on Apple Arcade.
I am slightly disappointed. I thought there would be a little more cult to it, considering the article's title. It does look like an interesting game.
@Greatluigi
Space is infinite, yet the metaphor of saying that art style if further away from Chibi then opposite ends of the universe almost seems a bit forgiving.
Chibi is mathematical mastery, the golden ratio showing the in size of the head to the size of the body and the circumference of the eyes to that of the head. That second part obviously means the eyes need to be round or virtually oblong at the same ratio as the head. You simply can't draw Chibi with horizontal eyes.
This is why we immediately see Chibi characters as "cute", because these are the dimensions we naturally associate with ... well, being natural. This is just a scaled down human and it looks awful and off-putting because instead of our brain just accepting Chibi as naturally cute in the same way you would an animal's face, our brain is trying to turn it into a real face and keeps screaming at us that something is very, very wrong.
I don't need a cozy gardening game for that.
@HeadPirate I disagree there, the faces really don't look that bad in this game. It is just a very generic 3D model, like in older The Sims games. And that's okay for an indie game, I think.
I've seen higher budget games with a lot worse character design.
@sanderev
"Worse" and "better" are subjective, that's completely up to you.
The mathematically relationships and artistic frame work that make up Chibi, and the wealth of study we have on how these are the dimensions the greatest majority of people find the most comfortable and natural isn't. Nor is the uncanny valley, the fact that if you make something using realistic human dimensions and scale most people find it off putting.
So I'm not commenting on if it's good or bad, or trying to tell you what opinion you should have. I'm educating the OP on the word Chibi so they don't misuse it in the future.
Spot on tag line!
@KateGray
There's something about the proportions, and the eyes, and even the framing of that logo image, that screams "predatory mobile game; keep away!" It's not that I'm averse to chibi or chibi-like styles (I'm on record defending the Diamond and Pearl remakes) but something about that image screams a warning of a bad time.
I have the game from Apple Arcade and it's really much fun! Definitely worth checking out.
@BreathingMiit there are NO IAP in this game, it's just the art style
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