Garden Witch Life is a new game from SOEDESCO that starts with a relatable premise. What if your plan in life fell apart? What if things didn’t go the way you had hoped? That’s the human experience boiled down to a single existential question. Things often don’t go as we plan, but in Garden Witch Life, a world of anthropomorphic creatures and magic gives your character the chance to pave a new present for a better future.

The premise and spirit of Garden Witch Life are its strengths. As a life sim centered on foraging and crafting your way through a tough time, there’s a lot to like in its philosophy. When all is broken, create anew. Alongside an island of cute and friendly creatures, you’re encouraged to do all of the craft-sim mainstays: chop wood, collect stone, and plant and harvest crops. With an art style that is somewhere between Animal Crossing and a game like Harvest Moon, there’s plenty of color and creativity to please the eye and player.

Gameplay and performance, however, start to make escaping to this fantasy world a bit tough. From the get-go, fetch quests designed to introduce gameplay mechanics feel too familiar and fairly unguided. There’s a good part of the first five hours of the game where I ran around simply trying to find the person I was meant to speak with or the item I needed to sell for money to pay back a friendly neighbor. Exploration is key in these games, but the on-ramp section of Garden Witch Life holds your hand poorly while also tasking you with menial to-dos.

There’s good writing here, which helps you come to terms with your life not going as planned. The character designs of your island neighbors are also strong. The issue is that actually playing the game isn’t as fun or creativity-focused as I hope to find in a cozy life sim. The interface for things like your tools and farming is well done, making navigating these systems much easier than other titles in this genre. That said, I think different games in this genre do a better job of quickly hooking the player into the gameplay loop.

A fair amount of bugs also distracted me. Camera views cutting in unpredictable ways or character models tweaking out aren’t uncommon in cozy games from smaller teams, but it’s worth noting. Where I land with Garden Witch Life is that there’s a premise here to love and an execution that doesn’t quite meet the mark. It’s a great experience if you’re a cozy gamer who eats these types of experiences up every time they hit the eShop, but it won’t be making your best-of list for 2024 or the larger cozy genre.

There is a fair amount to like here, but the game doesn’t do a good job of staying out of its own way. If you’re a cozy gamer through and through, see for yourself! Garden Witch Life is available now for Nintendo Switch, Xbox and PlayStation consoles, and PC via Steam. Let us know in the comments if you have a chance to check out this new release!

A Nintendo Switch review copy of Garden Witch Life was provided by SOEDESCO for this review.

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Garden Witch Life

$29.99

5

Score

5.0/10

Pros

• Really great story premise
• Cute character design and art direction

Cons

• Janky controls and camera bugs
• Fun factor is limited here, even from the start
• Not quite the cozy experience you're looking for in these types of games