▼ Not recommended
1 hrs
Pocket Oasis is a gardening game where you take care of plants on your little balcony across various European cities. I loved the idea of it, but after playing, I realised that it is moreso a game that you have in the background that you sometimes attend to, or one that you play for a bit and then come back to. It is extremely, extremely slow paced and is not what I expected after reading the storepage at all
Pros
Cons
When I first heard about this game, I was excited at the concept. I generally enjoy gardening, slow-paced, relaxing games where there’s not really an end goal, but more a focus on creating your own space and the journey to get there with lots of small goals to meet. Yet, in Pocket Oasis, I found it extremely frustrating and lacklustre. You are not explained anything, sometimes a bird comes with a few hints, but it is rare. I worked out that you need jam(?) to purchase new plants, items, pets etc. This jam acts as the game currency, but how you get it, is not clear. You can harvest chillies which give you very very few, and sometimes fertilising the plants seemed to give some as well. Then you must click on it in the top left corner to I suppose, turn it into jam. But the amount it takes to form 1 jar of jam is also unclear.
In essence, you must harvest a lot of fruit and veggies to keep your supply up! I always made sure that each plant was within the adequate range of water and fertiliser. However, eventually, you reach a point where you are harvesting so rarely, that you cannot unlock anything else and you just have to wait…. Until your plant becomes infected with a pest. To rid the pest, you must use the currency you are saving up to finally decorate your garden with, but have to purchase the pest removal item instead. Most of the time, mainly due to the confusing controls (sometimes drag and drop, other times point and click), the bugs would just come back, and I did not have enough jam to buy more pest control so the plant would die. I felt extremely restrained when trying to decorate my own oasis as I was so restricted by the very little currency I had, and eventually, I ran out. Most of the plants I bought did not seem to bloom in 1.5 hours and I am unsure if they are growing in a more realistic time, or if it was the wrong season for them to grow. The catalogue does not seem to mention which seasons each plant is, so I bought blindly. My blueberries, kiwi nor eggplant never grew to a harvestable state which meant I had almost 0 income coming in.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3249890099
Due to the lack of a tutorial, the game is hard to understand, and I am still not clear if this is supposed to be almost like a background, interactive wallpaper game instead of a game you actively play when launched. I felt no motivation to continue and was unable to decorate how I wanted to due the games own constraints and feel that very little QA or testing went into this before its release.
Featuring watercolour, handpainted art, the style is rather unique and feels very homely and comfortable. The sound is a faint but uplifting and equally relaxing, making the perfect atmosphere to potter around and tend to your plants. These are the best elements of the game.
It saddens me to not recommend this one, as I had high hopes for it…but I can’t help but find it a big disappointment. I suspect this is supposed to be played sparingly to let the plants grow, but for a $AU20.50 game, this feels rather expensive for a glorified idler. I was hoping for more of a simulator where my plants can thrive, and I can create my own little greenhouse. Instead, it was more like reality where not only do my plants die irl, but also virtually now too.
Pros
- Cute, watercolour hand-painted art
- Variety of plants and objects to choose from
- Said to utilise real geographical weather data to influence the ingame climate.
Cons
- Almost no tutorial
- Unnecessarily difficult and unclear controls
- Extremely slow-paced, plants do not seem to grow quick enough to harvest to progress
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Gameplay
When I first heard about this game, I was excited at the concept. I generally enjoy gardening, slow-paced, relaxing games where there’s not really an end goal, but more a focus on creating your own space and the journey to get there with lots of small goals to meet. Yet, in Pocket Oasis, I found it extremely frustrating and lacklustre. You are not explained anything, sometimes a bird comes with a few hints, but it is rare. I worked out that you need jam(?) to purchase new plants, items, pets etc. This jam acts as the game currency, but how you get it, is not clear. You can harvest chillies which give you very very few, and sometimes fertilising the plants seemed to give some as well. Then you must click on it in the top left corner to I suppose, turn it into jam. But the amount it takes to form 1 jar of jam is also unclear.
In essence, you must harvest a lot of fruit and veggies to keep your supply up! I always made sure that each plant was within the adequate range of water and fertiliser. However, eventually, you reach a point where you are harvesting so rarely, that you cannot unlock anything else and you just have to wait…. Until your plant becomes infected with a pest. To rid the pest, you must use the currency you are saving up to finally decorate your garden with, but have to purchase the pest removal item instead. Most of the time, mainly due to the confusing controls (sometimes drag and drop, other times point and click), the bugs would just come back, and I did not have enough jam to buy more pest control so the plant would die. I felt extremely restrained when trying to decorate my own oasis as I was so restricted by the very little currency I had, and eventually, I ran out. Most of the plants I bought did not seem to bloom in 1.5 hours and I am unsure if they are growing in a more realistic time, or if it was the wrong season for them to grow. The catalogue does not seem to mention which seasons each plant is, so I bought blindly. My blueberries, kiwi nor eggplant never grew to a harvestable state which meant I had almost 0 income coming in.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3249890099
Due to the lack of a tutorial, the game is hard to understand, and I am still not clear if this is supposed to be almost like a background, interactive wallpaper game instead of a game you actively play when launched. I felt no motivation to continue and was unable to decorate how I wanted to due the games own constraints and feel that very little QA or testing went into this before its release.
Visuals & Sound
Featuring watercolour, handpainted art, the style is rather unique and feels very homely and comfortable. The sound is a faint but uplifting and equally relaxing, making the perfect atmosphere to potter around and tend to your plants. These are the best elements of the game.
Technical & Stats
This game was played using a keyboard & mouse, and with the following PC specs.:
AMD Ryzen R5 7600x 5.4 GHz
32GB DDR5 5200 CL36 RAM
Radeon RX 6800 XT
2560x1440 resolution
NVMe 3.0 SSD
Windows 10
Conclusion
It saddens me to not recommend this one, as I had high hopes for it…but I can’t help but find it a big disappointment. I suspect this is supposed to be played sparingly to let the plants grow, but for a $AU20.50 game, this feels rather expensive for a glorified idler. I was hoping for more of a simulator where my plants can thrive, and I can create my own little greenhouse. Instead, it was more like reality where not only do my plants die irl, but also virtually now too.
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