Are you a bird lover? Do you love cozy, wholesome gaming with a bit of a challenge? I found the perfect combo of those features in the demo of Garden Trills.
The Backstory of Garden Trills
The game opens with a young bird and her parents moving to a new home. The parents are a bit concerned about moving into one of these new “condominiums” because they’ll have to hope they get along with their new neighbors. Their idea of a “condominium” is a birdhouse in a back yard with other birdhouses! Ha!
The demo of Garden Trills is so sweet and wholesome. I loved it!! The premise is a loving bird family of three, working together to succeed in their new home. I played as Tomi, a young female bird. I was given a variety of tasks by my parents in order to help our family do well. Everything we did involved teamwork. From my Dad asking me to help him deliver gifts to our new neighbors, to me asking my Mom to help me water new plants. It was very heartwarming.
The Gameplay in Garden Trills
The game has a built-in tutorial, which incorporates the story of the bird family moving to their new home. It also has 6 save slots, which is nice. At the start of the game, I was given tasks by my parents, which taught me the basic mechanics of the game. I was able to jump up and fly, but I could only fly for a limited amount of time. Then I’d fall back to earth. But I didn’t get hurt!! There’s no danger in Garden Trills.
On Steam, Garden Trills has the tag of platformer, which I suppose is technically true. But I don’t enjoy platformers and am very bad at them. Garden Trills is a special kind of platformer. One that’s fairly easy to play, and one where my character “sticks” where I want it to. I enjoyed this game, which says a lot! In the demo at least, the platforming is mostly limited to figuring out how to reach bird houses, which are very tall. The platforming involves strategically jumping from one item to another, or using the special properties of certain plants to give myself a boost. I guess what made Garden Trills so pleasant for me to play was the fact that nothing was timed. There was no need for speed; I could plan and play at my leisure. That’s really different from super-fast, high-pressure platformers.
After I’d completed a quest involving a particular bird house, a jaunty red bow appears on the house, which signals to me that this dwelling does not need any more actions. That’s a huge help, I’d be hard-pressed to remember which bird house I’d already been to!
My character also collected marbles, and I traded them for other items with at least one bird. When I was near a marble, I saw a glittering starburst in the distance. After I flew through that starburst, I had a new marble in my possession! I was told I own something called a marble radar, but at the moment I could not find it. I asked my Dad where it may be, and of course, he said something like “where did you last see it?”. Ha. I expect one day I will find it and be able to use it to my benefit. Marbles were not a huge part of the demo, but I believe they will be more useful in the full game, particularly as a type of currency. In addition, in the full game, collecting all the marbles in an area is the way to achieve 100%.
The Feel of Garden Trills
Garden Trills is an open world 3 D game with lots of areas to explore. The garden areas that my character lived in were gorgeous. They were colorful and lush with plants. There were specific types of areas where I could plant seeds; my Mom taught me this at the beginning of the game. But here’s something interesting. The different types of plants that I could grow have different properties. I could grow tall plants like tulips. If I jumped up to the flower of a tulip, I could make that tulip shoot me even higher in the air so I could reach certain areas. If I planted certain low-lying flowers, I could use them as a trampoline and gain some jumping height that way. What a game-changer that was when I finally (!!) figured it out.
The soundtrack to Garden Trills is soft and quiet. It’s very calming and goes along with the feel of the environment. The gameplay is relaxed and calm. There’s no day/night cycle and no danger, just exploring and trying to complete quests. There’s a concise quest journal that I was able to refer to, as well as an inventory system.
Final Thoughts
I thought the demo of Garden Trills was a lovely, charming game. I was particularly touched by the way the family worked together. For example, it takes 2 birds to lift a watering can. So when I needed to water a plant, I would press the X button on my controller, which produced my trilling sound. That was a signal to my Mom (or another bird nearby) that I needed help, and within seconds, help had arrived. It’s much easier to work together! I loved that!
The game has been released and is available for purchase on Steam. From what I’ve read in the discussions on Steam, there have been some QOL improvements to the full game that are not in the demo. That only makes the game even better!
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