Mini Gardens - Logic Puzzle

Very fun and relaxing game. It's very easy to learn and start playing, and there is a good progession of difficulty throughout the levels. If you're into puzzling then I recommend this game!

I enjoyed this game- its puzzles are sufficiently challenging, the interface is easy to use, and the graphics are cute, albeit a little basic. This game is inexpensive enough that if you enjoy "plumbing puzzles", this should be a no-brainer.

In short: Mini Gardens is based on Nikoli's "Masyu" logic puzzle. If that doesn't ring a bell - it's "Pearl" from Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection (STPPC). Since STPPC comes with a well-made level generator that is completely free, Mini Gardens has a tough time competing. I like some aspects of the presentation, but theming and UI are not great and prone to confuse the logic. Despite being pretty short the pricing seems adequate. I have issues with it, but this game is neither terrible nor broken - I just find it obsolete given the available competition. While I don't personally recommend it - as long as you know what you're getting yourself into, it's a completely fine purchase. In long: In terms of gameplay it's probably easier to read the rules of Masyu, the underlying logic game, on Nikoli's website. If that seems familiar to you, it's because Masyu rules were implemented as Pearl in the popular Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection. Note how the original rules elegantly use black and white dots to denote special tiles on an otherwise empty grid. Mini Gardens on the other hand tries to tie Masyu to the theme of watering a garden. Instead of drawing lines on an empty grid, you connect pre-built sprinklers with hoses. That means even empty and unused tiles have sprinklers, which is an obvious source of visual clutter and confusion (as evidenced by some of the other reviews). Secondly, special tiles come with straight and curved sprinklers. But the rules only call for *some kind* of straight line or corner, meaning the initial orientation is essentially random. Seeing a pre-built corner not actually denoting the corner it is showing obviously doesn't help teaching the rules. Another problem is that this game is pretty light on content. After a short tutorial there are just 50 hand-made levels. At least the difficulty curve seems well done, gradually ramping up complexity. Beyond level 35 I started enjoying the layouts. On the last few levels the game finally abandons its unhealthy obsession with symmetry, which adds a little bit of challenge. But I want to be clear here - if you are unfamiliar with Masyu/Pearl I am not a good benchmark. I know the rules very well and blitzed through the game in under 90 min, while an average player seems to take around 4 hours (judging by other reviews). Still, even just 90 min of playtime leave me feeling the game is pretty fairly priced given how cheap it is, although a generator for random puzzles might have convinced me to give this an actual recommendation. As per usual for indie puzzle games, the UI is where a lot goes wrong. The isometric perspective looks good, but isn't all-too-great for puzzle solving. Thankfully the game allows you to switch to a top-down view (very handy!). Still this doesn't solve the problem that lines are hard to see (small hoses connecting sprinklers on visually busy dark tiles) and that while drawing them the game frequently doesn't recognize the first tile, leading to annoying double-backs. For how simple and elegant the rules are and for how well I know them, I found it surprisingly hard to conceptualize them given all the visual clutter: Sprinklers everywhere, tiny and hard-to-see puzzle elements, tiles changing colours, rules pop-ups and alerts (can both be disabled), etc. I should also note the lack of undo functionality. Starting over seemed easier than remembering the order and undoing it manually given how cluttered the board becomes. I've just mentioned how I'm not a huge fan of how the puzzles look, but apart from them the presentation is actually pretty well done. Finished levels spawn-in cute garden elements and then zoom out to show these titular "mini gardens" inside glass bottles in neat little dioramas. I generally like low poly dioramas and they are well done here! I wish I could explore them more honestly. Unfortunately there seems to be only around 15 unique visuals, meaning they repeat several times through-out the game…