Developer: Agelvik
Publisher: Agelvik
Platform: PC, Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S
Tested On: Switch
God Damn The Garden – Review
As more and more indie developers step onto the stones of the game market, there are also more unique projects developed by one or two people that have their own story or style in mind. One of those games is God Damn The Garden, a project which made us curious to play it by its trailer alone as it looks trippy and original.
Story
God Damn The Garden has a unique story with “The God of Badass Heaven” throwing the player down a hole where everything revolves around a demonic, trippy garden. Here, the player needs to find a way to a couple of boss fights. There is some dialogue with random animals, but it’s really hard to like this. God Damn The Garden tries to be very, very edgy with nonsensical dialogue and meme-y words, appealing to a very specific audience. We ourselves found it nothing but annoying. In every conversation, you also get the chance to either choose the conversational path or kill the creature talking to you. In this game, the bad writing and edgy humor kind of kill what good the game brings by not taking itself seriously enough. Completing the game will probably take you somewhere between two and three hours, depending on how much you want to 100% the game, since there are some collectibles hidden in the world. While this isn’t much, the game also only costs you a couple of Dollars/Euros (retail is 4 Dollars/Euros on Steam.)
Graphics
While we were turned off by the insanely stupid dialogue, we got excited by the graphics. The game is very reminiscent of the Nintendo 64 era, where the start of 3D graphics ruled the time. Throughout the game, you mostly find yourself surrounded by rocks and plants, and these, as well as some enemy designs, are weirdly reminiscent of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time’s designs. That game, as well as Majora’s Mask, also definitely had some weird vibes going on at times. Think of the Shadow Temple or the general trippy vibe of a giant moon causing an apocalypse. This same atmosphere can be found in God Damn The Garden, and it’s mainly thanks to graphics. That being said, the player and enemy designs, especially the animations, feel a bit too simplistic at times, and you can, as an example, clip through pretty much any wall with your gun. While the game does not break by these things, it could have used a tiny bit more effort here and there to make it look more polished.
Sound
Talking about the weirder parts of the Zelda games on the N64, the sound also seems to be inspired by those moments. A lot of the music in God Damn The Garden is unnerving and out of place, creating a weird vibe where you don’t know what’s going on. The sound effects are generally alright though they sometimes feel a bit cheap, where especially the footsteps and gunshots can get annoying when you pay attention to them. Any voices and enemy sounds are not really memorable.
Gameplay
God Damn The Garden is an FPS. At the start of the game, we got insanely annoyed by how bad the game design seemed to be. You have a single gun that gets upgrades later in the game, but it mostly shoots loads of balls. For some reason, the player holds their life counter in the other hand. Any ammo or HP you need can be collected by destroying specific plants that hold what you need. The game is a bit bland at worst, but what we really disliked is the enemy design. Most enemies just zoom straight toward you, where they will hit you for about 25% of your health after which they are kind of glued to the player instead of giving you some space to breathe. Other enemies simply kill you in one hit, because apparently, that’s funny.
Another part of the game is also a first-person bullet hell. Some enemies, and especially bosses, shoot loads of bullets toward you. While these fights are designed decently, your options to actually dodge bullets are very limited. Aside from knowing your enemies’ positions, there is little you can do to avoid getting hit once you make the slightest mistake. The game allows you to jump as well as do a short dash, but aside from platforming puzzles and bursting past some enemies because we didn’t want to get involved with them, we found little use for these mechanics. Aside from the dialogue being stupid, we found that a couple of tweaks could improve the game a lot and make it less frustrating. Right now, the difficulty is barely dependent on player skill but is rather artificial, which is always annoying.
Conclusion
God Damn The Garden is a rather short game that is alright for a shorter experience. We did find some enjoyable moments in the game and especially liked the graphics, but overall it feels like the developer didn’t want to put more effort into this project to actually improve what’s there. We were under the impression that the poor dialogue and weird gameplay were used as an excuse to just publish the game already, making the entire thing feel like a rushed, short project
God Damn The Garden - Review,
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