REVIEW: CLOUD GARDENS

Each “track” in Cloud Gardens consists of a small section of dilapidated buildings, vehicles and / or roads. It is up to the player to cover these with greenery and thus create beautiful environments instead. To help us, we have various objects that we place in the right order to make the greenery grow.

Cloud Gardens is on the surface a very nice game with nice music and retro-inspired graphics, but then you start playing. The point is that on each course you have different things that you place and what you start with is to sow a seed that you will then be allowed to grow. At first I did not understand at all the connection between the things I place and the greenery growing. Everything feels completely random at first, which leads to enormous frustration.

There are no practice courses that give you a clear picture of what is required of the player. I managed the first four courses without having a clue what I was doing. I just posted a few different things completely randomly and suddenly I was ready to move on. When I came to a course that was a little bigger, it suddenly became impossible to move on. I put out different things and without prior warning it just says I have to restart.

Cloud Gardens really made me feel stupid at first before I finally started to realize that the different things I put out make the greenery I planted grow. Now the token fell down. The only problem is that it is a completely illogical premise that more “things” should provide better greenery. It would rather be the opposite, right?

So when I finally got past the track I was stuck on and with the belief that I now understand the game, I come to a new track where there is a scrap car and the only thing I have to place are old tires. Now I’m back again in not understanding because the tires do nothing to make the greenery grow further… After a lot of ifs and buts, I moved on and the feeling of relaxation was really blown away.

There is also a Creative Mode where you can build your own environments. During the game, you unlock different building blocks. The problem here is the same as with the rest of the game that the controls are very awkward so it is difficult to build something nice.

In summary, Cloud Garden is nice and atmospheric when it works, but the game mechanics are frustratingly illogical and so should you. So Cloud Garden did not give me any further relaxation, but rather the opposite.