As one who’s poured countless hours on the likes of Runescape in its heyday I can sort of see the appeal in Garden Paws.
One fine morning grand ma and pa decide that they’ve had enough of you, their farm and shop, leaving you to take care of business while they travel the world. Notwithstanding the opportunities that brings, it also leaves you with quite a bit of responsibility to your townsfolk it seems.
Keeping shop and farm lies at the core of Garden Paws’ role-playing experience and yet how either of these businesses expand, depends entirely on your choice of farming, fishing, crafting, animal breeding, exploration or combat.
With the grandparents out of town you get to set up shop your way; if it’s farming you enjoy, explore the wild in search of new seeds or trade with your local seller. Plant these, tend to them and sell the harvest in exchange for profit.
If its fishing you prefer, take rod and bait to any of the world’s islands with boats and gear provided for. Similarly each of the animals you encounter may be uniquely tamed, taken along on journeys as travel companions or even back home if you’d like to set up a Chicken Coop.
When all else fails there’s exploration to fall back on across a land filled with terrors, that also rewards you with your time with many secrets, artifacts, treasures and equipment to be sold to customers or donated to the Museum for renown.
Alternatively all the above can be combined to craft unique items with a crafting system offering many crafting stations, tool/equipment upgrades, unlocks, recipes and blueprints, and evolving skills for a total of 250+ items that can be sold or used.
Of course no shop keeping experience is complete without customization and so Garden Paws permits personalization of interior décor, business timings and even personal appearance to go with evolving strength, stamina and other stats.
Bitten Toast Games Inc. claims that one can easily lose hours to building their make-believe worlds here, and so includes periodic quests to keep you from turning entirely self-obsessed. These quests are generally issued by the Mayor/neighbors and may pertain to assisting in building projects, disaster management or witch hunting, among other things.
Finally if things get too lonely, fire up a multiplayer server exclusive to up to three friends or random strangers that you can jam with or hide from depending on how friendly they are.
Gameplay is endless, the quests currently sit at 20+ hours, while PVE battles, mini-games and an extensive quest-line are cited Kickstarter goals. I’m hoping these bring along better environmental visuals and a tasty soundscape to boot.
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