This weekend I fell in love with a blueberry. Then I realised it was a grape, so I guess I fell in love with a grape. In Garden Story, a sort of town-rebuilding RPG for PC and Mac, with dungeons and beautiful chunky pixel art and a sweet nature, you play as Concord, a grape with a mission of regeneration. The demo was available on Steam over the last few days, while the game itself is out sometime in Spring.
This is fairly well-travelled territory by now, but it doesn't stop Garden Story being wonderful. Your job is to restore a town to prosperity, harvesting stuff, clearing stuff up, knocking about gooey purple enemies known as the Rot. In the demo, you visit a new area that has fallen into ruin, do a few favours for a few people and then rattle through a mini-dungeon where simple combat combines with sokoban puzzles. Push those crates!
Combat and harvesting are all handled the same way: you have a weapon of some kind and you hit stuff. There's a stamina gauge to watch and enemies strike back every now and then, but the demo at least is very gentle. Alongside the stick I was hitting stuff with I also got a sickle by doing a solid for a lazy tomato, and there's a dowsing rod, which is essentially a fishing rod, that allows you to do damage too. Damaging people with a fishing rod!