Scrap Garden

If you were a little barrel shaped robot who wakes up and sees his fellow bots crashed to the ground, rusted and busted, what would you do? Find out what happened obviously, and that’s what this demo of Scrap Garden is all about.

Let’s face it, WALL-E and Josef from Machinarium have made it impossible to resist a game in which the protagonist is a cute robot who looks completely harmless but ends up being a total boss, in the sweet kind of way.

In Scrap Garden you get to meet a similar character who’s silent, he looks rather flimsy, has a funny way of walking and you can’t but help to feel sorry for the little guy. All of his friends and all the robot inhabitants of the city are powered off and worse, rusting away.

There is a profound feeling of loneliness that dominates the game and it’s highlighted by a somewhat sad but very good soundtrack. Strolling around you see friendly looking robots that have frozen mid wave, a boy and a girl robot are left sitting still on a bench holding hands, there are a lot of things in Scrap Garden that get to you a bit and push you forward to find out what has happened. Motivation by empathy is what this game seems to be using and it’s a rather interesting approach.

The initial pace of Scrap Garden lets you get acquainted with the controls and movement possibilities. In this stage, the game does seem to need a bit more polishing on some aspects of animation and gameplay mechanics but it’s totally playable and you won’t really notice anything unless you’re looking for something specific.

Strolling around the city and discovering it piece by piece is really enjoyable. You get to stomp the occasional rat, accidentally tip over a robot cop and as you do so, you wonder more and more about what actually happened.

On a closing note, Scrap Garden is a title you should look forward to. Its main character is charming in his silent ways, the robots you get to meet are interesting and the story will certainly will have a few interesting twists. Finis the demo to get an example of that.