▼ Not recommended
4 hrs
Warning: AI Slop
This game is partially or completely made with talentless, soulless AI generated content.
"Pocket Garden" is not a game. Games contain meaningful gamelike interaction and game loops, which are absent in this software.
Instead of being a game, "Pocket Garden" is a software application that lets you arrange some asset flipped plants and AI slop around a 3D grid, so you can then look at the flipped assets and AI slop. It's truly come to the time when shovelware is now made up of AI slop and assets, just when we thought asset flipping was the lowest that lazy developers could go.
As always with life, things get worse, not better. We have to accept that the last couple of decades were a golden age, and now, the encrappification of the world accelerates. And this lazy AI slop asset flip is just a symptom.
For those unfamiliar with what actually makes something a game, a "game loop" describes the interaction and feedback a gamer has when playing a game.
Tetris, for example, has a game loop where a random block appears, the gamer interacts with the block to position it, and then the game decides if that finishes a row or not, increases the players score if any rows were completed, then gives the gamer another block to position. Counter-Strike has a game loop where a player seeks another player, tests their skill against that player by shooting them or being shot, the computer rewards the player if they win, and then if the player survives, they repeat that loop.
There's no loop here, no true interactive feedback. It simply is not a game, it cannot be "played".
This has misleadingly been launched in the "Games" section of Steam instead of the "Software" section. This is a common mistake for developers who are new to Steam, or don't understand the difference between games and software which isn't a game. It seems this software published incorrectly as a game is simply lack of experience/knowledge of the correct process.
Here's a link for the process to publish non-game software on Steam:
Steam Developer Help With Software Publishing
It's unfortunate this process was not known about/followed, resulting in a software application being published in the wrong place.
Publishing things which aren't games on Steam in the Games section as games is misleading to gamers and somewhat harmful, because it pollutes the Steam marketplace and takes away visibility and market exposure for genuine game developers who do the right thing and make games for gamers.
There are no gameplay loops in this software, no "gameplay", no meaningful game like interaction. It's a software application and as such has no merits as a video game for gamers. Because of this, I cannot recommend this non-game software as a game to gamers.
Despite having no up-front cost, this failed to appeal to the 130 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB shows this peaked at only 3 concurrent users... this is a dismal public reception. This was so bad they couldn't even give it away.
16 found helpful
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