Update Fifty-Two: 18 September 2017

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Scrap Garden was chosen for me to play by my girlfriend for these reasons: ‘It’s got robots! It looks cute! It’s a platformer! There’s a garden!’ Those were mostly the reasons why I picked it up to begin with, but, unfortunately, it didn’t live up to what I thought it would be.

It’s a 3D platformer, yes, though bewilderingly in some segments it becomes a locked-camera sidescroller which is a little odd. You’re a robot who wakes up and finds all your other robot pals have suddenly stopped moving, and you go on a quest to find a way to power everybody up again. There’s jumping, there’s breaking stuff by jumping on it, there’s killing enemies by jumping on them - that kind of stuff.

It’s an amateur title. Made by, mostly, two guys, Scrap Garden lacks a lot of polish and a lot of skill, making it feel very… clumsy. There’s no awful game breaking bugs, and it’s difficult to point out specific flaws with it (…. okay, not really, but the list would be very long) and it really just boils down to experience and competency making games that this end result doesn’t quite display. It feels like one click above a college dev team’s senior project.

BLAEO user Trent mentioned that he really enjoyed playing this with his kids, and they liked it a lot, too, and I think it’s simplicity works very well for young gamers - this is not a knock, games genuinely for kids are important. It just doesn’t really hit my three asks - is it smart? is it pretty? is it a joy to play? - and it’s not really an experience I’m happy to have had. It happens!

Next up: I let her pick again. She chose -

See you soon!