Greenhearth Necromancer

It's a really fun and chill game. If there is one thing I wanted, not sure if there is a setting somewhere but, I wish I could turn off the red exclamation mark symbols.

A lovely little idler about life, death, and grief. I found the story to be beautifully poignant (and very neurodivergent and LGBT+ inclusive!). The art is beautifully done, with some plants looking fantastic and others looking downright creepy (as is the wont of an undead plant). Definitely recommend.

Greenhearth Necromancer is a gentle game about grief and death, but also a warm game about community, friendship and a sense of belonging. All these concepts are seamlessly weaved into a semi-idle gameplay, which combines gardening and somewhat randomized story events. I did cry, when playing this game and it gave me a lot to think about. This game also helped me to focus on things and made mundane tasks a bit more fun and rewarding. Definitely a game I have spent the most hours on and also one of my favourite ones of this year. Originally I got interested of this game, because it has the same writer as one of my favourite games of all time “I was a teenage exocolonist”, but this game became its own thing I liked (loved even) as a whole. In Greenhearth Necromancer you play as Echo, who just graduated from a school of necromancy as a bona-fide necromancer. They return to their grandmother’s, Rose’s old apartment after her passing. Echo and Rose got estranged before Rose died, because Echo felt that Rose, as a talented greenwitch couldn’t accept them as a necromancer. Echo feels out of place in an empty apartment that holds so many memories aside from Rose’s (now dead) garden. They also have mixed feelings living in a co-op in which community Rose was a big part of. Can they be accepted as well, despite being a necromancer and so different from Rose? What about the other residents? With the help of Rose’s surviving familiar Composifer Echo starts their own garden rising plants from the dead as well as getting to know the people of the co-op. Echo also makes some interesting findings of Rose’s research: is death not the end? Maybe Rose wanted to work on accepting Echo and their necromancy? Suffice to say, besides the stellar writing I came for, everything else swept me with it. The gameplay was addictive for a while, because you constantly learned and unlocked new things and it felt really fun to make progress in the story and your garden, when you weren’t even actively doing anything. This often gave me a boost to do something else, while the game ran in the background. Returning to tend to my plants and uncover more of the story felt like a reward after doing something less fun or exciting, like folding my laundry or writing an essay. I found a sweet spot for me was 30 minutes: all the new story event cards would be fully loaded and all of my plants were manageable. The story events outside the main story were a fun way to expand the worldbuilding and the co-op setting and residents. Because the same events happened multiple times you could always make a different choice and see the outcome. You were always rewarded as well, because no matter the choice, after three you would get a random item or charm. Even the characters outside of the main story had little arcs and were endearing. All in all, I loved this game, one of my favourites this year. I honestly would recommend this to people, who liked Spiritfarer, since this has the same kind of gentleness and warmth, when it comes to death and grief. The music, art and character and plant designs were great. I wish we could get an art book DLC with all the various sprites and maybe see some first ideas/concepts. I also loved, how the start menu changed throughout the story! Some people did hope for a story-mode, but it is understandable, that it would not necessarily work with this type of gameplay. Something I do wish this game would have had is a story log of some kind. A lot of the details I forget, since it usually takes quite long until a main story-event card drops, especially during the 3rd and 4th acts. I feel like, a log or being able to re-read main story events would have helped, like I don’t remember the reason George’s friends died, or how exactly Gulshan and his husband met, or if Theo dropped out of school or didn't go to one, etc. Like, at the end, I never got Laurel’s plant and final event. I waited for like, three irl days and I kind of lost my patience…