Go! Go! GOTY! 2021: Game 7: Cloud Gardens

• Game: Noio's Cloud Gardens.
• Release Month: September.
• Quick Look: N/A.
• Started: 20/01.
• Completed: N/A.

Moving right along, our next game for this (last) year's GOTY feature is Cloud Gardens: a "Zen" botanical puzzle game that came out of early access on Steam in September 2021. The goal of Cloud Gardens is to take in a diorama of our hubris at work - that is to say, a post-apocalyptic scene devoid of life - and introduce some greenery to it by way of a variety of fast-growing seeds. The seeds sprout plants, each of which has slightly different behavior but generally follow the rules that they first need to find purchase on a fence, wall, floor, or overhang and will grow faster if more trash is thrown about close to it. As plants grow, they release pods, spores, flowers, and fruit that the player can collect: pick up enough of these and you'll earn yourself another seed, ideally planted a bit further afield where it has room to flourish. As you continue to fill the scene with lush color and vitality, you'll eventually hit a 100% score requirement and be allowed to move onto the next scene.

The game is deceptively simple, especially early on where you never seem to run out of trash to strew around to propagate your little seedlings. You're quickly introduced to various new seed types - the first, a hanging plant, works best when it can dangle off something like a signpost or a sheer edge, and you'll soon acquire fern-like plants that grow in place and ivy that creeps its way across walls - and can choose between them when creating new seeds to deposit. The type of seeds you want will also depend on the scene itself, of course: whether there's a lot of vertical space for wall plants, or if you're going to have to make do with ground-based ones. Trash can be tactically placed between several sprouts to boost them all, but some trash is so large that you need to plan ahead in order to effectively use them: cars and other vehicles being some of the larger units early on. Eventually, you'll get into the swing of things, though some levels might require a few repeats before you figure out the particular tricks to them.

The game is certainly luxurious in its pace and atmosphere; a gentle ambient soundtrack that corresponds to the seeds you're planting with little musical stings has that sort of relaxed vibe you'd look for in a game like this, and despite the worrisome implications prompted by the set design that humanity has gone and beefed it good and proper this time there's never a sense of melancholy to the game. It's more that of triumph instead, at least for the flora that struggle to thrive in our absence. As well as the game's story mode, which eventually starts to branch out via an overworld map towards different types of formerly developed environments like junkyards, highways, and urban centers, the player can also take on a pure sandbox mode with the many trash objects and other elements that they've acquired in the story mode. The game recognizes that a constant progression of difficulty as you carefully consider where to place each seed and trash object and may have to repeat a level several times until you've sussed out the order might not lend itself to the casual, unhurried vibe that its presentation and premise would otherwise suggest: the sandbox mode feels like a response to this design dichotomy, which can be tinkered around with as the player wishes with no fail states.

Both the game's surprising length - preliminary HowLongToBeat reports suggest somewhere in the twenty-hour range to complete the story mode - and the fact that the difficulty takes a sharp hike as soon as they start limiting how many items you can use before needing to start over meant my desire to keep playing dissipated fairly quickly. One issue is that you can't always predict how plants will thrive and whether or not the destination you plant them in can even support them. There are observable rules, but there's also some arbitrariness with the 3D dioramas and how plants will interact its specific area types. A fence makes a good place for an ivy-type plant, which makes sense, but having trees and shrubs spring forth out of solid concrete or a rusted metal car chassis is less logical. Objects have physics, so many might roll off after being tossed into the scene - doing so will allow them to be used again, which might be a good way to recycle garbage over and over since their growth effects take effect the moment they hit something - or they might even drop on top a plant you've been nurturing which crushes it and returns its seed form in your inventory. Half-Life 2 found great mileage in its 3D physics manipulation puzzles, but almost every attempt to make a puzzle game based on similar mechanics since has been a frustratingly capricious mess. The game's also just kinda dull: it's not exactly aiming to be a thrill ride, but once you've figured out how to plant vegetation to overgrow an ancient car pile-up on a disused highway once it doesn't get that much more compelling the next five or six times. Different environments add new trash, new seed types, and new wrinkles to overcome, but after the first set I was ready to call it quits: accommodatingly, that's when the difficulty spike hit to help me realize that I probably need to move on if I'm going to finish a top ten list before Giant Bomb's GOTY season begins on Wednesday.

I think Cloud Gardens could certainly find an audience of budding (so to speak) post-apocalyptic horticulturalists, and I do like its whole vibe and presentation. The polygonal art style rather resembles PS1 graphics in a very knowing way - those same blocky models with slightly warped textures wrapped around them - and its atmosphere does seem to make time slow down in a mostly positive way. A little more consistency to the growth process and less obfuscation around what's best to plant where and exactly how much trash you have on hand to make these miniature jungles and forests bloom might've helped maintain my attention, though I suspect the game's deliberate pace and significant size would've scared me off eventually regardless. It'll have its enthusiastic proponents I'm sure: maybe those that stick largely to mobile games or the Nintendo Switch (it's presently only available on PC, Mac, and Xbox systems), since it seems like a perfect way to carve out a little relaxation time in the middle of a hectic day of work and commutes. Plus, it'll let you fantasize about how in the probable near-future all these loud trains, ugly skyscrapers, and busy roads will be ashes and dust left behind by a dead race of bipedal apes that thought they were hot shit for one galactic nanosecond. (I'm fine, truly; I suspect it's just the usual January doldrums.)

Current 2021 GOTY Ranking:

1. Ys IX: Monstrum Nox
2. Scarlet Nexus
3. Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Nights
4. Loop Hero
5. Deltarune (Chapter 2)
6. Tiny Lands
7. Luck Be a Landlord
8. StarBoy
9. No Longer Home
10. Cloud Gardens

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