POSTED 12/2/11


THE UNDERGARDEN

Atari

Man sows the seed, nature grows the seed and then we eat the seed. Hippie drivel from our fave hippie, Neil, that’s entirely irrelevant to The UnderGarden... except for the hippie drivel bit.

Apparently intended as a calming experience akin to Fl0w and Flower (we’re keenly awaiting Flowest), imagine PixelJunk Shooter without the shooty crossed with Ecco the Dolphin (hey, could we attach some frickin’ lasers to his head?) plus the bloominess of the aforementioned Flower and you’ll have a ballpark. Then you could have fun schmacking a ball about, instead of playing this.

Rather than being wind, eddies, wafts or whatever, in The UnderGarden you commandeer a little character that looks somewhat akin to a weight-watching TellyTubby. You’re plonked into various underwater cavern dealies whereby you swoosh about, making pollen spurt from, umm, pollinator thingies, which in turn makes flowers bloom. As you progress, you start encountering puzzles whereby you must use varying fruits to move platforms, wheels and such so that you can progress. Just bash the tree, pick up the fruit and schlep it to a switch. This same method is used to transport underwater buskers about, too. We’re fucked if we know why.

In fact, that last sentence could be used to succinctly summarise The UnderGarden. Whilst given a basic idea of what various bits and pieces do, you’re otherwise left to your own devices, and the ‘WTF?isms’ of poor game design. Now, remember, this is billed as a chilled-out experience which no doubt drops the ‘z’ word somewhere. If we’re chilling, we don’t want to be gnawing our knuckles to the tendons trying to work out just what the fuck the point is – game-wise, natch, not existentially.

The UnderGarden is pretty, but it’s also pretty annoying.

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