Cloud Gardens Review: Tranquillity & Relaxation
Cloud Gardens impresses with beautiful visions, adaptive music, and ambient design. It has a wonderful story mode that takes us through tiny worlds in the sky that need to be healed whilst making the player feel calm and relaxed the whole way through!
A Seedlings First Impression
Cloud Gardens doesn’t hold your hand, or give you any initial instructions. But, it’s gorgeously simplistic design and clear prompts do help to guide you through.
When loading up, players are given gardens which are devoid of all life, bar one or two dormant seeds. The player is then tasked with cleaning up, and improving the garden, in what can only be described as the most therapeutic task you’ll ever receive.
Each garden has its own array of items. From sign posts to bottles, each item placed near your seeds will help them grow. The only downside to this being, some items won’t match the perfect garden you envisioned. Unfortunately, this means you sometimes have to find the sweet spot for the seeds to grow, rather than make your garden look as fabulous as you can.
Each story mission you complete you’l be rewarded with the levels items for sandbox mode.
The Gardens are Alive with the Sound of Music
Each level has one simple goal, growth. The more your seeds grow, the more you notice the world around you change. Each garden looks like a small slice of a post-apocalyptic world. This makes it all the more satisfying when you breathe new life into a garden.
Crows circle and caw around your garden and there is a wind-like ambient noise always present in the background. But when you throw your seeds begin to grow, you feel the entire experience begin to shift. If nothing else, the peaceful melody will entice you to keep growing your garden.
The more time you put into the garden, the bigger your plants will bloom. When they finally flower, they can be collected and replaced with other seeds. Fill your garden with plants and flowers to really hear the music ramp up. Then, once your garden comes to its scenic end, the music follows suit into a beautiful cacophony of ambient sounds and lucid tones.
Sometimes when the current story level is over, the map does not simply disappear, but expands, with new elements. Seeing your perfect creation surrounded by a rundown world, makes you want to clean it all, beautifying everything in your way. You’ll want to save the world, one plant at a time.
The Sandbox
Sandbox mode lets you create a small lifeless world with the objects you find during your adventure. Your cold world can be anything. But, until you start giving it life with the seeds you’ve discovered, It’s bleak, depressing and the ambient sounds are dull and void.
We might not win any awards for our design. But, when we started to place those seeds, the game started to ooze life and personality.
We built this garden! But, it didn’t start to truly feel alive until the seeds sprouted, grew, and spread. This is because the music has an uplifting quality. When the sweeping score comes in, I can guarantee, you’ll feel calm to your core.
The End of the Line
The greenhouse is currently as far as we can play but there are six full chapters planned for Cloud Gardens each introducing new world building elements, new seeds and new life to a game already packed with imagination, charisma and charm.
Cloud Gardens’ charm comes from its ability to be picked up and played through in a relaxing afternoon. It has tranquil music and charming level design. It doesn’t have any kind of narrative, bar what you give to it yourself. But, it’s ability to strike a balance between the natural and manufactured is what makes Cloud Gardens a must for everyone with an interest in sandbox games.
Cloud Gardens is the perfect wholesome treat to enjoy on a rainy afternoon. We give it 3.5/5 and recommend that you play it! It’s available for purchase now on Steam.
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