Kiri's
Garden

Kiri's Garden (2018) is a pixel-puzzle about planting trees, growing grass, and moving flowers. You must plant trees to finish a level, but this is only possible once you've covered every other square in either grass or some other plant. It sounds simple but offers a surprisingly deep level of strategy, as different plants grow and spread in different ways, meaning you have to do things in the correct order, carefully thinking about each end every action you take.

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In each level, you have an area of land with dirt and concrete. To unlock the bridge to the next level, you need to place a tree sapling in each of the designated tiles. However, to do this, every other square of dirt needs to be covered in a plant of any variety.

You can pick up flowers, fungi, grass and other plants from concrete tiles and place them on the dirt to cover it. Flowers cover individual squares of dirt, and fungi behave in the same way but also cover the adjacent tiles and reeds only spread on the sand. Later levels also introduce other plants, such as sweet potatoes and tomatoes, each with their own unique behaviours.

The complexity is that these plants make it easy to cover the area, but you must keep the tiles where the trees go clear of pants. This means you need to ensure grass or other plants won't spread onto them by blocking them off with flowers or other plants. However, this very same mechanic of blocking can harm your efforts as well, as all too easily you can block off entire sections of the board from being covered.

It's a novel idea for a game, which offers a uniquely challenging puzzle experience that prioritises experimenting with the game mechanics to find a solution, and rewards outside-the-box thinking, determination and persistence.

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Our examiner, Ben Kendall, first checked Kiri's Garden 2 years ago. It was re-examined by Jo Robertson and updated 23 months ago.