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Scrap Garden Indie Game Review

Scrap Garden Indie Game Review

We at Geeky Hobbies would like to thank Egidijus Bachur, Alexey Davydov, and Flazm for the review copy of Scrap Garden used for this review. Other than receiving a free copy of the game to review, we at Geeky Hobbies received no other compensation for this review.

Scrap Garden tells the tale of the adorable robot Canny. While getting an upgrade Canny falls asleep. When he wakes up years have passed and things have changed drastically. All of his robot friends have shut down and won’t start back up. Canny is the last hope for the robot world and must figure out what happened and try to restore power to all of his robot friends.

One of my favorite video game genres is the platformer. The platformer was one of the most popular video game genres in the 1990s and early 2000s.. Major publishers started abandoning the platformer though in the later 2000s as popularity shifted to the first and third person shooter. With the rise of indie developers though the platformer has started a resurgence.

As soon as I began playing Scrap Garden it reminded me a lot of the early 3D platformers especially platformers of the N64/Playstation era. While the graphics are considerably better than those early 3D games, the gameplay reminds me a lot of that era of games. In Scrap Garden you mostly roam around the world collecting gems and other objects. When you encounter enemies you either have to jump on their heads or throw objects at them. You will also encounter the occasional puzzle and mini game and each world ends with a mini-boss fight. Scrap Garden is a really simple game which only includes controls to move around, jump/double jump and a button to interact and pick up objects. For what it is I had fun with Scrap Garden. While it is not the best platformer I have ever played, it does a good job replicating the old school 3D platformers. If you enjoyed the early 3D platformers I think you should have fun with Scrap Garden.

From the look of Canny to the game’s world, everything about Scrap Garden oozes charm. Scrap Garden is just a really cute game. Scrap Garden is the type of game that the whole family can enjoy. The story is a little cutesy at times but it is entertaining and you want to find out what happens to Canny and the other robots. The game may look like it is more for children than adults but if you enjoy cute platformers you can get a lot of enjoyment out of Scrap Garden.

While I had fun with Scrap Garden, there are two things that keep it from being a great game.

First if you are looking for a challenge Scrap Garden isn’t going to give you one. If you have any experience with platformers you will breeze through the game. With the game’s difficulty it feels like Scrap Garden is more of a children’s game that adults can also enjoy. I think I might have died five times in the entire game with several of the deaths being due to instant deaths (falling in water, getting ate by the boss, etc). The main reason you don’t die very often is that the game has few if any difficult platforming sections and it is pretty easy to kill the enemies since you just have to jump on their head’s once. The enemies also tend to just wait underneath you after you have jumped in the air. The only actual challenge in the game comes from having to repeat the entire section from the last checkpoint every time you die.

The game’s puzzles also aren’t very challenging. If you have any experience with puzzles in games you shouldn’t have any trouble with the puzzles in Scrap Garden. There might have been one puzzle in the entire game that I didn’t figure out as soon as I saw the puzzle. It didn’t take long to solve that puzzle either. There is nothing wrong with the puzzles except that they are so straightforward that they feel like they were designed more for children than adults.

The other issue with the game is the length. This is partially due to the difficulty but the game is only around two hours long. If you fully explore the worlds and try to collect as many gems as possible it will take you around 2-2.5 hours since it took me that long to collect every gem that I could see. Two and a half hours is pretty short for a platformer. Having collected every gem I could see, I can say that there really isn’t much else to the game after finishing the game other than playing through the game again and unlocking some achievements.

One quick thing that I would like to bring up is that Scrap Garden is apparently getting a prequel which is coming out soon. Scrap Garden The Day Before is going to be a free prequel that tells the tale of what happened the day before the events of the beginning of the game. I enjoyed Scrap Garden so I plan on checking out the prequel when it is released.

Overall I found Scrap Garden to be a nice callback to platformers of the 1990s and early 2000s. The gameplay is satisfying especially to people who grew up with the older 3D platforming games. Scrap Garden is really charming/cute and should appeal to the whole family. The only issues I had with the game is that it is really easy and quite short. Basically my recommendation comes down to how much you like cute platformers. The game is fun to play but you probably aren’t going to be challenged by it. If you aren’t a big fan of platformers or want a challenge, Scrap Garden is probably not going to be for you. If you like cute platformers though I would recommend Scrap Garden.