Indie Game of the Week - Under the Garden

TIGsource recently ran a competition where coders could turn a fake game cart and turn it into a real game! The competition has ended now and was won by farmergnome (as he is known on the TIGforums) and his masterpiece Under the Garden - inspired by a video game cartridge titled A Bit of Garden.

The original (fake) cart that acted as reference for the game

The game is a sort of survival game, vaguely reminiscent of the under-received GameBoy Color game Survival Kids and more recently Lost in Blue. Boasting absolutely beautiful and very atmospheric rich graphics, you play as a (what i think to be) lumberjack whose house has recently been destroyed in a storm and you must explore your surroundings to kind of make the most of what you have. There are some adventure game elements in there, such as clicking to pick up items and using them on other items to make new items! Such as chopping a tree to make wood for your fire, which acts as a save point and stamina restoration (since stamina is constantly going down, even more so in certain weather conditions such as heavy snow). You can even picks up parts of your house to re-build or even build another one elsewhere to provide more shelter from the random weather conditions.

A well written engine allows trees to realistically sway from side to sidedepending on weather

The game really makes you explore and make the most of what you have. A few times my stamina dropped below zero, and instead of dying you restart at the home but the lumberjack progressively gets worse for wear such as memory loss, suffering random stamina drops from health wounds, and becoming so weak that it makes him impossible to weild a shotgun. All these things make the game even more immersive, and make you want to keep playing even to see what kind of disease the lumberjack picks up next!

The game always manages to keep you guessing whats around the corner.

It's something you really have to experience yourself and is such a beautifully made game, hats off to the developer and the fact he could create something so immersive in such a short space of time.

Download Under the Garden
Check out the devlog here