Gardening for Beginners

Gardening for Beginners by Juhana Leinonen is a short speed-IF game describing the misadventures of a budding gardener.

What is supposed to be a peaceful and upbeat day of work quickly turns into a nightmare as the player is beset by the horrors of nature.

I can recommend this game as a choice to suggest to text adventure newbies, as it is uncomplicated, easy to play and funny to boot.

Personally I would add an option to name your fish to add some more personal involvement to the game. In fact the enclosed framework of the game world even would allow for a game allowing the player whatever he wants to do (e.g. drink the poison, or eat the fish).

Anyway, quite a fun little title to play.

5/10

This is a speed IF, so it has a lot of rough edges, but the mid-game is pretty fun.

You are a gardener who just can't handle all of the problems going on. You start out with a nice checklist of things to do, but it soon dissolves into chaos.

A lot more synonyms and actions could be implemented. But that sort of thing is exactly what separates Speed-IF from regular IF, isn't it?

The writing is comedic and amusing, and there is some clever work going on behind the scenes in the shifting room descriptions.

I enjoyed the (frustrating!) mechanics. Some commands are not well implemented (water garden, water crows, etc), and I think the game would benefit from letting the player go off the rails a little bit, but overall this was a fun and engaging short piece.