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The Garden of Earthly Regrets

by solipsistgames

(based on 1 rating)
1 review2 members have played this game. It's on 1 wishlist.

About the Story

A mystery game of garden exploration — you are in a garden, or are you? Things have happened here, or have they?

Electronic adaptation of an entry for the 2022 Lindenbaum prize for short gamebook fiction.

Ratings and Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Garden exploration, July 20, 2024
by Lance Cirone (Backwater, Vermont)

This is a surreal game where much of it seems to be left to the player's interpretation. You explore a garden surrounding a wedding, picking up items and using them to uncover more details: such as finding nice clothes to join the wedding yourself or getting gardening tools to dig up a mysterious spot in the garden. The latter will lead to you uncovering a grave and begin a murder mystery. Namely, you think you were the murderer, and it might also be your own wedding you're attending -- it's all a bit unclear.

Every time you loop around the garden, you are given the choice to submit to one of two outcomes (accepting your guilt or deciding it wasn't your fault), and the game tells you neither outcome is exactly the "correct" one. It depends on the information you found and how you, the player, feel. Alternatively, you can take another trip around the garden to use items or look for places you might have missed. It's a pretty engaging structure, and I found myself constantly coming across new things.

I also liked the game's writing style: it leans into this more ethereal vibe where you're not exactly sure what's real or not. I wasn't able to come across a proper ending in my playthrough, but I might have missed something. The game was a bit longer than I expected, too. Overall, I'd recommend this one.

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