Fruit for the Village

Sadly, I cannot recommend this one, even as a fairly big fan of the clicker genre. There are 2 flower pots, a single and a quad. There's an auto-clicker. That's it. There are absolutely no more growers, no faster clickers, no upgrades, nothing. No progression at all, just building identical clusters of the same 2 flowerpots. Also fairly buggy. The prices went off the edges of the price tag after only about a half hour, and the save game disk turned invisible after the first time it was used. Definitely not worth $10.

I'd be more lenient if it were an early access title still in development, but the dev seems to have abandoned it regardless. It clearly was not fully tested before submission - both (relatively) minor (text running off the edges of the surface it's supposed to be printed on) and severe (totally game-breaking inability to save) bugs become apparent after only a short time of play. The supposed 'narrative' is delivered exclusively through a series of sterile radio reports from a very bored sounding narrator, and is told at a geologic pace. Even after my full hour+ of play there was no clear plot, just the barest hints of potential conflict brewing. I only played as long as I did, instead of quitting after probably around a half-hour, because of my own stupidly late realization of the ability to double-up (and triple/quadruple/etc. -up) the grow-pads being struck by a single auto-farmer (which the trailer features, had I watched it), which served to renew my interest for a bit longer. I...

Was it worth $10? Absolutely not. Is it worth $1.80? Maybe, but still probably not. If you are expecting a true garden simulator or a game with an interesting story, then you will be quite disappointed on both counts I'm afraid. However, if you are one of those people who likes to take the barest hints of story and setting and weave your own tale from them then there's hope. I don't know if there's a way to win this game or not, though I'm pretty sure there isn't. There's a story mode and an endless mode which implies that the story mode does reach a conclusion at some point, however after the 2.5 hour mark (roughly) you're pretty much guaranteed to fail no matter what you do. For me, the true entertainment in this game came from figuring out how to cheat the system in humorous ways. For example, in order to progress in the game you have to continue to buy and send bowls of fruit to the village. In order to do that you must make money. In order to do that you must grow fruit. In o...