Horticular: Garden Gnome Video Game
Carried magically through the worlds by strange garden gnomes, you must help them transform a devastated wasteland into a lush garden using your innate magical gardening abilities. This is the story of Horticular, a gardening game based on horticulture.
To do this, you must find the right mix of plants and structures so that the garden not only looks beautiful but is also rich in diverse life. Different plants need different substrates: dense grass, nutrient-rich soil, dry savanna. These plants are then combined in different quantities to improve the entire habitat. And when the right plants and the right soil come together, ... animals are born!
In this game, it is about finding out what comes and what goes to attract new residents to the garden. The more happy plants and animals you have, the more money you earn and the more you can expand your garden with new plant species and useful garden gnomes.
Horticular has a demo version on Steam, and playing this demo really crystallizes the main idea of the game. There is a story that you can explore by completing goals, and that means you have to tend the garden against the accelerated forces of decay and the agents of corruption (the evil garden gnomes, of course).
It is a creative game with limitations. You find the magical nectar of plants to get more decorations, and then use these decorations to win the garden competition. You enrich your garden with new residents to get more garden space, then you think about how you can design this new area to make optimal use of it and attract more new garden gnomes.
You can find Horticular on Steam, as well as its free demo. It does not have a release date yet, but is listed as "coming soon". It is developed by inDirection Games and published by Slug Disco. You can find more information on its official website, horticulargame.com.