Wild Seasons, and with them a certain magic to the mayhem of farming.
I was going through the demos of Steam and found a whole lot of deckbuilding games. While I don’t particularly go for them all that often, I figured this one coincides with farming, so it shouldn’t be too stressful to win a game or two.
Pros:
- Unique farming combat
Cons:
- Bosses don’t make sense
- Combat overshadows storyline
- No clear path
Explanation to Negative Feedback
Bosses don’t make sense
By saying this, I mean they don’t make sense for a gardening game.
Like, the first boss you come across is called Bud, and I can understand why we’re battling out with it, since a bud is one of the beginning life-stages of a plant, but then we have The Seamstress, and it’s like…what does she have to do with gardening?
This can go hand-in-hand with the storyline, however, which has its own issue.
So while the bosses from the outside looking in don’t blend well when it comes to a farming game, if they’re implemented correctly as far as the storyline goes, then that’s fine.
Combat overshadows storyline
Every time you enter a boss fight, the start or the continuation of a storyline shows up before the battle actually begins. These texts only usually consist of a single sentence, so while, yes, I did read what was written, by the start of the combat, I’d totally forgotten what it had said.
No clear path
While you’re making your way through to a destination, you’ve got a map, and at each location you can go to, there’s a boss fight up until you reach said destination–one of the places being the Beach.
The main problem with the map is that you can choose where you want to go, but there’s no indication on which boss you should choose after beating the previous one. I mean, it makes sense a little bit, but up to a certain point it becomes a little bit of a heads-or-tails toss-up.
Each area has a boss with a set amount of health.
Meaning if you go from an area with an easy boss, the next area you choose if you’re not careful will lead to a boss that has way more health than you and can easily dominate the fight.
Don’t get me wrong, if you build your deck right, you can really whoop ass, even with high health bosses, but with the lack of being able to heal yourself more often, they can still screw you over if you’ve got 16HP to their 100HP, y’know?
Explanation to Positive Feedback
Unique farming combat
I know, I know, there’s only one pro here, but I promise it’s a long and good one.
Basically, you have a farming grid.
You can purchase plants from the store with water instead of coin, and you always start off with 10 water, unless after you defeat a boss you choose a perk that ups your water count. Aside from plants, you can also purchase soil and such to boost your plants (RNG-based).
Each plant has specific perks.
For instance, Nutmeg grants you 3 Shield points, which then results in 3 blocked damage.
These plants have health to them, and once that health runs out, which it will by either not being watered (via the watering can, which costs water to use) or by just RNG-unluckiness even if you did water them. I’m not fond of that particular mechanic, but I understand it does help to remove plants from the board in order for you to plant other, possibly better ones.
If your plants do die, they won’t disappear from your farming grid until after you defeat a boss in battle, which is nice.
When it comes to the combat, you have two turns.
If you play a card, they might have icons at the top of them, which signifies how many stars they’ll accumulate on your little star path between the boss and your hand.
The goal is to reach a High Power star which will double your card attributes. If your star field is maxed out, however, you’ll need to choose the “rest” option to reset it, otherwise cards you choose will have a reduction to their power. Resting means you skip whatever turn you might’ve had to place a card down, which automatically lets the enemy have their next move on you.
Speaking of enemy moves, you can see what they’re going to do next by hovering over the icon above them, which is a nice touch.
It’s definitely an intriguing combat system mixed with gardening.
