What Makes a Hero? || A Hero and a Garden (PC)

"I think a hero is any person really intent on making this a better place for all people." --Maya Angelou

Title Screen

A hero and a Garden is an adorable and slow paced game about picking berries and righting wrongs created by npckc. We played another game from npckc a while back called One Night, Hot Springs, which I loved,so I am looking forward to seeing what this game has to offer. 

In A Hero and A Garden, you play as Cyrus, a hero who attacks a village of monster folk with the aim of defeating the witch and saving the Princess of his kingdom. Unaware that his sword is magic, his sword clashes with the witch’s magic and causes a great deal of damage to the town. The witch curses Cyrus to tend the gardens and work to earn money for reparations to rebuild the town he so damaged.

A horned doctor explains to Cyrus how the garden works. We have to grow berries, and then fill orders that townspeople make for those berries. We use the money we earn to pay for the repairs in the town, and hopefully everyone is happy in the end. As Cyrus grows the berries and fills orders, he meets more of the town’s monsters and even the Princess he came to save. The monsters grow on him, and Cyrus begins to wonder if monsters are really what humans have claimed them to be. Perhaps he was truly in the wrong to begin with?

Sooty!

The artwork for this game is simple, and absolutely adorable. I love Sooty and I wanted to give him some ear scratches like I know my dogs love. All of the endings are cute, and once you finish the game there is a gallery you can access to view all of the other possible endings—which I loved because that means I didn’t have to spend an hour growing berries again to see another ending.

Speaking of berries, you are going to spend a lot of time growing berries. There are 5 different kinds of berries, each with a different timing for when the berries will appear. Some are rather slow. Towards the end when I was just trying to get my 100 scorch berries to finish the game, I was knitting stitches on my scarf while I waited for berries to grow. Just saying, if you don’t want to stare at the screen, maybe have something else to do.

All of the characters you meet in the game are unique and adorable, and I enjoyed the dialog Cyrus had with them. I didn’t run into any issues in gameplay, and the mechanics all worked as intended. The music and sound effects were nice, although the music sounds like a lullaby, and paired with the slow pace of the game it made me feel a little sleepy. You could flip that and say the game is just very relaxing, which it is.

Grow my berries, grow!

Overall I liked the game. The dialogue is cute and made me chuckle at times, and the characters were cute and fun to meet. The gameplay is repetitive, and the slow pace make it difficult to stay engaged at times. If you need a break from the fast pacing gaming world we’re in today, take a break with this game. You can download it free from Itch.io HERE. Be sure to let npckc know what you thought.

Do you like slower paced, more relaxing style games, or do you prefer the fast paced edge of your seat games? Let me know in the comments, and I’ll see you all next time!