packbat | spoilery thoughts on "A Good Gardener"

Played through "A Good Gardener" today. Couple hours long, content warnings for war, blood, and death.

Spoilery thoughts under the cut.

We knew our gardening was supporting the war effort. We had a sense we were captive, gardening for people whose violence held us hostage.

We noticed that some of the plants looked like weapons when grown. Particularly the shuriken berries.

We were told that our weapons were the best and we continued gardening the best we could - saving seeds when there was no rain to refill the watering can, keeping the can always under the rainspout to gather as much water as possible, trying to keep everything organized so we could water everything without trampling anything. We did our best right to the end.

...none of the comments on itch.io actually got at the things that we're dwelling on after playing the game. It felt overwhelmingly like a game about complicity - a game about being used and needing to decide what to do about it - and for us specifically it was about the ease of giving ourselves excuses so we could keep doing a task that was simple and satisfying and we were capable of.

And then our boss (captor) died, and we probably died too.

Hell of a good ending. The way it cut between gameplay and titles felt absolutely right.

The graphics were quite good as well, in their flat cartoon stylized way.

We don't know what to do with the experience of this game, but it was significant.

(Edit: Something else we noticed: the boss (captor) was white. The military cadet wasn't. Neither were we.)