Gardens Inc. 4: Blooming Stars Review – Consistent as Perennials

Jill and Mike are gardening superstars. They’re so good at what they do, they just scored their own TV show! Grab a watering can and join the two overalls-clad heroes as they travel around the world to fix gardens from …

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Jill and Mike are gardening superstars. They’re so good at what they do, they just scored their own TV show! Grab a watering can and join the two overalls-clad heroes as they travel around the world to fix gardens from Japan to South America.

Gardens Inc. 4: Blooming Stars is a straightforward time management game, even by casual standards. Your main goal is to clear sections of path to gain access to more parts of the map. Spend a few resources to get rid of piles of rubble, potholes, mounds of sticks, and other nature related items. With the debris out of the way you can pick up valuable resource piles, but more importantly, you can repair buildings that keep an infinite supply of goodies flowing your way.

Gardens Inc. 4: Blooming Stars Review

Four resources are your virtual bread and butter in Gardens Inc. 4: tools, fertilizer, wood, and stone. Just about every action requires a couple of points from two of these piles. Need to fix a stone bridge? You’ll need stone for that. Time to plant flowers? Guess you’ll need some fertilizer!

To keep resources topped up, you’ll need to repair and upgrade pre-placed structures on the map. Once operational, supply shops will regularly produce resource packets you can send your workers to take back to home base. To add a touch of strategy to the mix, special switch houses let you choose which resource to produce. Toggle wisely, though, as each swap wastes valuable time!

Gardens Inc. 4: Blooming Stars Review

Gardens Inc. 4 isn’t afraid to get a little crazy. You know how gardening would be a very boring things to watch on TV? The show’s producer has an idea on how to spice things up: hang gliding. Yes, hang gliding! Repairing gliding stations will let your workers float from island to island on gusts of winds. Functionally it’s no different than walking on a path, but when planting roses is your main activity, you’ll take all the excitement you can get.

To complete a level in Gardens Inc. 4, all you have to do is fulfill the goals listed at the bottom of the screen. These are usually pretty simple tasks that take the form of repairing a number of resource stations or planting and watering a set quantity of flowers. Of course, the linear nature of Gardens Inc. 4 means all you really have to do is clear all the debris and fix all the structures to win, but we’ll let that slide.

Gardens Inc. 4: Blooming Stars Review

Speaking of linearity, Gardens Inc. 4 stays a little too simple for its own good. The strategy behind managing your workers and resources has been whittled down to almost nothing. Pretty much the only important decision you’ll make is whether you should switch that shack to rocks or leave it as tools. Everything else comes down to shaving seconds off of your level time to earn a better medal, and even on the highest difficulty level, that’s not much of a challenge.

Gardens Inc. 4: Blooming Stars doesn’t take a lot of chances in its grand design, but what it does it does extremely well. Queueing actions is as easy as can be, and managing resources is quite fun, even if it isn’t a complex task. To top it off, Gardens Inc. 4 includes a little room decorating mini-game that lets you spruce up the playroom for Jill and Mike’s upcoming child. Nothing like a little family drama to spice up a reality show!

The good

  • Easy to get into, completely addictive once you start.
  • Charming characters that bring the gameplay to life.

The bad

  • Levels are a little too linear.
  • Challenge level is quite low.
80 out of 100
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