The Secrets of Sylvan Gardens

This was a refreshing game to play. In a time where a lot of games are using AI art or text that is bland and often nonsensical, this game stood out to me for its distinct art style (I think a combination of watercolors and something else?) and its well-planned, symmetric plot and characters.

This is one of only two games marked 'over two hours' on the website, and I spent about 4 hours from start to finish, but it would probably be about 2.5 hours if I locked in.

It's a wholesome game, the same way Eikas by by Lauren O'Donoghue is (for those who remember it from last IFComp). Both focus on relationships and nature in a nature setting and take place over a long period of time.

This game has its own unique elements, though. You are a newcomer to a town with a magical villa, with beautiful gardens, a mysterious library, and four characters, each having a tragic element in their lives as well as an interest in you. You yourself are afflicted by sleepwalking fits that take you into the garden at night.

All four characters have friendship paths and romance paths on top of that. I ended up romancing Penny the botanist and befriending the others.

Design-wise, some of the game does suffer from from having large, complex option and dialogue trees but requiring you to plow through almost all of them, which can feel like a chore at times, although the writing is charming. There are also options where you choose how to react, but these often boil down to "Be nice, be indifferent, be mean," with little use for the mean option (that I found). On the other hand, the ending choice was very well done, and I had to sit and contemplate for a while on what I'd pick, and there were both good and bad consequences to my choice. It's one of the best ethical dilemmas I've had in a game for a while. Similarly, there are some puzzle elements which are pretty fun, most of them relatively light but requiring at least some notetaking (one puzzle in particular feels like an Ocarina of Time reference to me).

Overall, I think that it would have been better to slow down and take the game in at a relaxed pace rather than rushing for the competition, as this is a pretty mellow and chill game to settle down with; a good game to play while drinking warm cider, snuggled up on the couch when it rains or snows outside.

There are two other games by this author in the competition; I definitely am looking forward to them now!

I’ve now played all three games entered in IFComp 2025 by Lamp Post Projects (LPP; this review is going to get fairly acronym-heavy!), and have, inevitably, been comparing them. My favorite is Fantasy Opera (FO); one reason for that is its specific details, making it very grounded in its 17th-century-Italy-inspired opera house setting. The other two LPP games, while drawing on specific historical inspirations (which are detailed in the “behind the game” documents that each links to at the end), had much more generic-feeling fantasy settings. Another thing I preferred in FO is that the PC was a bit less of a blank slate; they have a defined profession (detective), and depending on the stats you pick, they may have knowledge of different areas of the world/society.

In The Path of Totality (PT), the other LPP IFComp game which this review is not actually about, you get to pick at the beginning what it is that’s drawn you to go on the central pilgrimage, which allowed me to characterize the PC a bit. In The Secrets of Sylvan Gardens (SSG), though, you are pretty much the blankest of blank slates. In both SGG and PT, a big part of the focus is on forming relationships with the NPCs—but in both, the way to form those relationships is basically just to always pick the nice/pleasant dialogue option, as opposed to the more neutral or cold/rude ones. As such, the relationship building in SSG didn’t feel authentic to me; I wasn’t developing relationships with these people, but just avoiding being a jerk, and that alone was enough for them to become attached to me. I would have liked opportunities to actively characterize the PC more. For example, what if there were multiple nice/supportive options, but in different tones, like earnest/sincere, commiserating, and lighthearted?

I liked the setup of SSG, with the PC’s mysterious draw to the titular gardens, getting pulled into an old mystery and the current woes of the staff. But again, I preferred FO’s investigation mechanics—rolling dice for knowledge or dexterity checks, interviewing people; in SSG it often just felt like “make sure you click every option.” And the puzzles felt too easy: the (Spoiler - click to show)naiad’s name was so strongly signposted it didn’t really feel like a puzzle; the (Spoiler - click to show)tooth one was easily solved by lawnmowering (although I did like the line-drawing one; it was satisfying to get it right on my first guess!). I also missed the sense of time pressure from FO; the pacing of SSG felt almost too leisurely, where there was a sense of (or sometimes it was literal) just waiting around until circumstances were right for the next story beat. The journal segments also slowed the pacing; I’d prefer if they were available to view anytime from the menu, so I could refresh my memory on prior events (as I played over several days), instead of being inserted into the story.

Going back to the actual plot: you discover that (Spoiler - click to show)three staff members at Sylvan Gardens have magical ailments (one of which is an “everyone you love will suffer a terrible fate” curse) and that the long-deceased founder of the estate, Pecunia, hid her store of magical plant seeds behind various puzzley gating mechanisms. The fourth NPC, ostensibly the gardens’ hermit, later reveals himself as a centuries-old dryad who’s the only surviving member of his species as far as he knows, after Pecunia destroyed his forest to build her home, inadvertently wiping out all the other resident dryads. So there’s a lot of pain and trauma in these characters’ backstories, more than I had expected given the gentle tone and vibes of the game, and the way these past tragedies were incorporated didn’t quite work for me. For example, (Spoiler - click to show)Felix the gardener discovered his curse when his wife died tragically, but I don’t recall ever getting to ask him about her; she’s just a sad fact to add pathos to his plight. I wanted the game to sit with the tragedies imposed on its characters a bit more, rather than just using them as motivation for the player/PC.

This is a fairly critical review, but I think LPP is a skilled author who’s clearly put a lot of work into all three of these games and is doing cool things with Ink (replacing the continuous-scroll text pane with a single page + history view; adding a nice menu system with multiple save slots; incorporating lovely watercolor art and original music). I did enjoy my time with SSG, and I look forward to seeing what LPP does in the future!

As far as production values go, the Secrets of Sylvan Gardens probably has the best I’ve seen in IFcomp so far, although I’ve yet to finish the other two entries by the developer, as of this review. With beautifully drawn art, nice sound and aesthetically well-designed interface, this is one game which could pass for a professional product.

The writing and story is pretty strong, as you find yourself suffering from a strange condition, and being drawn to the place. There, you run into four other characters, each with their own secrets and also suffering from their own conditions. These characters have interesting backstories, and I also enjoyed learning more about them over time.

Gameplay largely consists of exploring the gardens and clearing every activity/conversation you can find. Once you’ve cleared a prerequisite set of activities for the day, the story allows you to move on to the next day. The puzzles, from what I’ve seen, are pretty straightforward for the most part. That said, the harder part comes from exploring every nook and cranny of the garden, trying to find some conversation or activity you haven’t cleared yet, so that you can advance to the next day. This part can get tedious, and the fact that there are multiple days also multiplies this frustration.

I was unable to finish this title under IFcomp’s mandatory two hour limit as I got stuck on day five. That wasn’t fun. I spent probably about a dozen attempts combing the entire map, turning over every single stone to find the one thing (maybe more?) which was keeping me from advancing to the next day. I could have continued playing beyond two hours for the purposes of this review, but I was simply tired and gave up. I’m not sure if I was really missing something, or ran into a showstopper bug. Either way, I think it would be helpful if a player could request a direct hint from the game on where to go next if they are hopelessly stuck. (I tried looking at the walkthrough, but the instructions were vague, and I couldn’t pin down what exactly I was missing, if it was even in the walkthrough at all.)

(Update: I communicated with the writer privately and they described what I was missing to advance the story. It seems that I missed something, rather than it being a bug. Still, the rating and my playthrough stands as I had already spent the max two hours on the game when I first wrote the review. Nevertheless, I appreciate the active communication.)

All in all, I still had fun with it. The production values were good, the story and writing was solid, puzzles were pretty fun even when they’re easy and the game has a lot of cozy and charming feelings in it. However, combing the gardens for everything you need to advance the story can feel tedious at times. Maybe I’ll come back and finish this one day. Anyway, I’m off to see the other games by this developer.