Shu's Garden

Once in a while I like to indulge myself with one of those games that don't fit into any genre, the unusual kind. So is the case with Shu's Garden, a 2D game which apart from not making any sense, doesn’t have an end scenario. It just keeps going on and on, being strange.

To summarize, the game features you as a self-sustaining cactus that move around by rolling and has the ability to create or mutate vegetation. There is no actual purpose to the game, apart from discovering everything there is about it, and there is quite the amount.

The best part about Shu's Garden, besides the fact that it’s way out there, is that it gets stranger by the minute. It’s one thing to be a round cactus that can suck giant trees out of the ground and turn them into simple seeds, and it’s another to be able to travel to other planets to plant those seeds. Also, you have a tail.

You can’t have little planets without having little oceans. In part, Shu's Garden is about discovering new places, creating new life and making friends. Yeah, apart from you, there will be other strange beings such as yourself. Another factor that adds up to the unusual that is this game.

Despite the lack of guidance and purpose, Shu's Garden can be enjoyable. The soundtrack is excellent, the controls are easy to pickup and the gameplay mechanics become enjoyable when you get used to them. That’s an entirely different subject.

Shu's Garden is one of the most unusual things I’ve played, and equally interesting. I’m not sure what the developers were aiming at, but if it was something abstract, they nailed it.