Gardens are places of calm and quiet, as well as resources for your dinner table. If you love the outdoors, what’s better than having a little piece of nature right in your backyard? Nothing gets your good mood going than stepping into your garden after a long day at the job, just sitting down on a swing and listening to the birds singing away in the trees. If there’s a pond… bonus points.

The thing about gardens is that they need some work in order to be at their best. If you have just a simple garden with a few chairs and a little barbeque area, that’s not much to work with. A few hours per week will do the trick. If instead, you have a vegetable garden or even a greenhouse, that’s a completely different story. Gardens need maintenance and extreme care, for you and your family to be able to enjoy them to the fullest.



The Rise Of Simulators

Luckily, you can now be into gardens and not even have one. That would be a real shame if you were living in a house and not in an apartment block but still, it is possible. With the rise of simulators, a new adventure awaits garden enthusiasts without a pitch of grass around their properties. It’s called Garden Simulator and has just been released for the gaming world to enjoy. A simulator about a garden?





Yes! If the people want it, the people get it, right? And who’s really surprised about it when we have a farming simulator, a carwash simulator, campus simulator, park simulator, fishing and train simulator? It would be easier to count the things that have not yet been turned into simulator games, rather than the normal way around. What is this Garden Simulator all about? Here are ten things you should know about the new game.



Ten Things About The New Garden Simulator

The work of the talented people at SunDust, creators of no other game so far in the industry, Garden Simulator does exactly what it’s supposed to do. It turns any player into a gardener, complete with the space to be turned into the ultimate garden, tools, a shed, impressive decorations and functional parts. Garden Simulator is the very first garden-specific game out there, set to be released in September 2022. Here are ten things you should know about it.

… What is it, more exactly? - Let's start with the quote for this game, which states that the love of gardening is a seed once sown that never dies. Unfortunately, seeds do die if you don't water them. And don't cover them, spray them for bugs and other damaging critters, harvest them and so on. What is this game all about? It's precisely what the name suggests: a simulator designed to let you create your very own virtual garden. You are free to pick if you want to have a flower garden, vegetables, trees, decorative, Japanese, tropical, and so on. There is absolutely no rule to govern what you can do. Your imagination is the only thing that will keep you from having the most amazing garden on the web.





Crops - A garden is often a mixture of beauty and usefulness. The beauty part is composed of flowers, trees, maybe a little fountain, a lounging area, and even a barbeque zone with some nice wooden encasings. Some people even put pools in their gardens or other amusement elements. The useful part of the garden is made out of the crops, fruits and vegetables that grow right in your backyard. The game has you taking care of the crops year-round so that you will never get bored ever while at home. You will be able to enjoy nature through these crops, managing them from seeds to fully grown fruits or vegetables. You will cultivate your very own virtual garden, take care of the delicate plants, harvest them when the time comes, and then sell most of them for a profit.

The process - Garden Simulator will go through the entire process of harvesting goods. You will start with a patch of land that can differ based on settings, from simple grounds to hilly or even riverbeds, filled with good harvesting potential. Then you will get all of the decorations that you need, which will enhance the gardening experience and also make it easier for you to work. Decorations can be practical not just impressive to look at. And surely, you will be met with the challenges of planting your seeds and nurturing them all through the season, up until it's time to harvest the goods.

Moneymaking - The gardening process is not just for you to get your zen mood on. It also has a deep monetary element. The richer your yield, the more money you will make. The more time you invest in taking care of your crops, and the more diverse the offer, the more money you can get. And the cycle continues, as the more money you make, the better you can enhance your piece of paradise. Although you can simply focus on enriching your garden without taking too much time to crop and sell, this is one of the game's main objectives. So it would be a shame to just garden away and not benefit from the financial part of the deal. Money will get you further and further with the establishment after all.

Not just the base game - You might think a game like Garden Simulator is a one-time deal, with a fixed number of features and options. You'd be wrong, fortunately. The game comes out now but the ever-evolving library of possibilities will be close to endless. This is because of the countless unlockable features and additional content that the team behind the game are already working on. These extras will make your green thumb go overboard, and keep it challenged for much longer than a regular game. In fact, a simulator is a simulator no matter what it simulates. and adding valuable extras is an important part of the deal. Even if we're talking lawnmowers, new seeds that the neighbours don’t have, or a new fountain!

Working hard - The main reason why we think this game will be a success and very different from other sims is that the producers are making a complete emphasis on difficulty. They state right from the start, in a playful way, that the garden you will be growing while playing will not just appear out of nothing, just by you singing "Oh, how beautiful", and sitting in the shade all day. You have everything you need at your disposal, watering cans, lawnmowers, seeds and all of the other equipment that you need in order for your garden to simply bloom, literally and figuratively. It's all about you, and how much hard work you're willing to do if the garden is a spectacle of the beautiful or the disastrous.

Free Play - Introduced in many games before, but maybe under a different acronym, Free Play is precisely what a gardening simulator needs. It allows you to, well, play at large, freely, to tend to your garden the way you want, under the circumstances you want, and start from nothing to reach the top. Well, they do give you 1000 bucks to start with, from which you can start designing your garden how you please. Then, after selling some crops, you can later upgrade your premises with the money you make. There are more than 40 tools available to you for the pebbled paradise of dreams, all of which come with the base pack. Free Play also comes with changing weather, many pests you need to battle, as well as other obstacles. Free Play is a two-edged sword, in which balancing beauty and profit is a constant, delicious struggle.





Humble Graphics - In any video game from the years 2000 onwards, graphics have been a crucial element. There's something about playing a game that has great textures, incredible life-like characters, and even animated surroundings. Garden Simulator, it does miss a bit of that graphical sparkle. We'll call these humble graphics, as they are not really bad, yet the quality of the game itself is not suffering from this feature. Although not Harvest Moon quality when it comes to the video specs, this actually makes Garden Simulator what it is. A straightforward, fully customizable and enjoyable experience. It's no fuss, no coconuts, just simple, engaging gaming doing the garden work that you love most.

Natural pests - Speaking of taking care of the land and the garden, let's talk about... pets! Sorry, sorry, PESTS. Unlike pets, pests are little creatures that you DON'T WANT around your garden. Or house, or anywhere else. Pests are microbes, bacteria, mana, critters, even small rodents and so on, with one purpose, and one purpose only: to ruin your beautiful garden. Despite most simulators that deal with soil harvesting never including this feature in the gameplay, Garden Simulator did. They introduced the mighty pests and people are excited about this new struggle they will be facing while gaming. Natural pests are going to be a hustle to get out of your garden but one of the most unique features to, well, enjoy out of the entire game!



How To Be The Best Gardener

It’s hard to get good at a gardening game without owning a garden. So if you do own one, the best thing you can do right now is to go out there and practice. There’s no better practice than real-world practice, right? Take a look at how your garden is functioning, what makes it unique, what are some of its flaws and so on. Take notes and then make adjustments. Interestingly, you will see that the virtual simulator is very similar to your real garden experience.





Another great way to get good at the gardening sim is to practice. This is a valuable way of learning anything but especially in a game like this. There are so many tools and buttons, it can be quite challenging and overwhelming at first. Yet if you really take the time and put in the effort required for you to get accustomed to all of them, you will get the rewards. Spending at least one hour per day on a new game, especially in a niched one such as this one, will pay a lot and in no time in terms of experience and gratification. Just practice.

And finally, probably the most important piece of advice that we can give you on how to succeed with a garden simulator game is to go out and explore. Take a stroll through the village (just visit one if you don’t live in one, can’t be more than a few miles away) and see what the best gardens of the place look like. See what their main elements are, such as trees, relaxing areas, the greenhouse, crops, whatever they might be. Just look and be curious. And then come home and practice on your virtual garden, reproducing the best features of the real ones.

And there you have it! That’s what we know about Garden Simulator, the game that will provide gardening enthusiasts with a safe space to grow their crops even during winter. It’s all virtual of course but the level of detail the people at SunDust have put into this title will surely make it feel just like the real thing.

Well, minus the mud and the bugs…