Wylde Flowers

Genre: Management Sim / RPG

Players: 1

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Review:

Wylde Flowers is a family-friendly “Farming RPG”-style Management Simulation with RPG elements released on PC, mobile devices, and Nintendo Switch in 2022. This game has players taking the role of Tara, a young woman who moves to a small island town to help her sick grandmother tend to her farm, only to discover that her grandmother (and in turn, Tara herself) is a witch in a secretive coven.

While technically a Farming RPG, Wylde Flowers places much of its emphasis away from the farming part of the gameplay – your farm-tending will at least at first be limited to an extremely small garden that requires little attention, and while it will expand over time, you’ll find that after a little tending, most of your in-game day will be freed up to do other things.

Those “other things” tend to be various errands you’ll find yourself running for the game’s townsfolk, talking with them to get to know them better, and gradually progressing the story. Yes, it’s fairly rare for games in this genre to have much in the way of a story, but Wylde Flowers is relatively unique in that it makes its characters and story a focus… sort of.

Yeah, I don’t want to mislead you here, it’s not like the story in Wylde Flowers is especially deep, epic, or even especially compelling. The witches coven you find yourself a part of is invested in maintaining balance while also concerned about the judgment of the more close-minded members of the village, and while you’re managing your farm and gaining new magical abilities in the coven, you’ll also be getting to know the villagers themselves, each of whom has a distinct personality and is dealing with their own issues. None of this is anything truly monumental, but it does help you to feel like more of a functioning community rather than just your standard generic fill-the-blanks roles.

As an example, Violet runs the flower shop, but doesn’t particularly care for flowers, and is more interested in fashion and dreams of life in a big city. However, she feels responsible for her younger brother, and is glad her shop is near the school where she can keep an eye on him, even though this also puts her right next to the city hall, and she’s a little resentful of the new mayor, who ousted her father from that position and this new guy seems pretty pompous to her.

These personalities are fleshed out with full voice acting, another fairly uncommon feature within this genre. And while I think that the writing in this game is decent but not spectacular, the excellent voice acting still does a good job investing the game’s characters with a life of their own.

In fact, the presentation in Wylde Flowers is overall really excellent, with extremely polished, nice-looking, slightly-cartoony 3D visuals that really make the game’s locales particularly pleasant. My one caveat here is that I don’t care for the characters’ slightly chibi-ified character designs, which seem off-putting to me. Also, these visuals are backed by an instrumental soundtrack that, while decent, isn’t especially memorable.

There is one more thing I should note regarding Wylde Flowers – this is one of the more easygoing, accessible entries in this genre. There’s no in-game calendar to try to race against (seasons change when you reach certain points in the game’s story), no inventory management (carry as much as you want), no tool management (the game automatically has you use the right tool for a task based on context), and players can even change the speed at which the time of day progresses in the game’s menus if they want to go at a more relaxed pace. At the same time, there’s less freedom to customize and place things where you want, and early on you’ll be very limited in what you can do compared to other games in the genre.

This means that Wylde Flowers may seem like a somewhat more shallow cakewalk for more experienced players, but it’s probably ideal for those looking for an introduction to the genre. The polished presentation and focus on its low-stakes story make it a good game for those first getting the hang of the mechanics of a Farming RPG-style game, and there’s still plenty here to keep things interesting and make for some good variety. More experienced players may still find this game worth a look, but this is definitely a solid choice for novices wanting to try their hand at this style of Management Simulation.

tl;dr – Wylde Flowers is a family-friendly “Farming RPG”-style Management Simulation with less of a focus on the farming and more of a focus on running errands for townsfolk and partaking in a story about a young woman helping her grandmother and becoming the newest member of the village’s secretive coven of witches. This game’s presentation is highly-polished and the gameplay is extremely easygoing and accessible, making it ideal for newcomers to the genre, though more experienced players may find it lacking in options and customizability. In either case, Wylde Flowers is a solid addition to this genre.

Grade: B

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