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Sometimes, just sometimes, viral phenomena reach a status big enough for the majority of the public to end up knowing about them. This is the typical case in which you mention a meme to someone thinking you’ve seen it and have no idea. This happened with Garten of Banban, because when it came out more than a year and a half ago, it became a phenomenon that went viral among the smallest of the house, joining other titles little known to us, like a more “mainstream” game. “Console audience: Rainbow Friends, Doors and the most popular, Poppy Playtime and the famous Huggy Wuggy.
The Internet, and especially YouTube, was flooded with content related to these games, some from Roblox, or indie games that, at low cost, appeared on Steam or other lesser-known stores like itch.io, just where Garten de Banban came from. The curious thing is that This viralization has given rise to a huge amount of content for fans, who have provided context, invented new stories or imagined new episodes.. I know this well, because my children were part of this viralization, so much so that I have stuffed animals of these characters at home. This may seem like a joke to many of you, but the names of the characters were part of the daily dialect of the little ones.
Of course, as a good gamer dad, I was the first to decide to look for these titles and try them. The outer layer did not go further than what we all thought: an indie, with scares, with a simple appearance, of which we almost found many. But it is also true that it has a certain shabby charm that is able to hook the little ones thanks to the aesthetics of the characters. Rainbow Friends are colorful monsters, Poppy Playtime is based on a toy factory and Garten de Banban in a strange daycare where the guards are not disguised, but are actually friendly monsters
In principle, we have the first 4 chapters available for Xbox One and Xbox Series However, on Steam and mobile platforms they have already released the seventh installment and the eighth is currently in development, so if it is successful, we will probably end up seeing them all on Microsoft consoles.
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Technical section
Garten of Banban is a very simple game on a technical and artistic level. Its level design, its proposal and practically everything that surrounds its aesthetic is almost minimalist. Almost empty rooms, objects designed without much effort, even the dolls themselves seem drawn by a small child. However, this does not exempt it from having a certain dark and effective charm. Mainly because it seems really designed for children, with large buttons, huge icons and clear instructions, even if some of the puzzles it proposes or confrontations force us to try several times for lack of knowing how to follow these instructions, which children themselves They do better than we do.
The good news is that, at least on Xbox Series, these types of adaptations don’t usually go very well, but the truth is that it’s quite suitable for the home console hardware, although I suspect it will backfire a bit on Xbox One.
Although these 4 chapters are now presented to us together (although they are tediously installed as 4 different games), the truth is that the evolution between one and the other is very noticeable. First of all by their duration, the complexity of the situations or even the originality of the new characters that emerge. Each chapter far surpasses the previous one in every aspect and one can appreciate this feeling of small evolution between one and the other.
Gameplay
As we mentioned, our experience is based on the 4 available chapters, since the story continues from one to the other and, what is better, the game itself evolves, showing increasingly fun puzzles, situations that we must solve and even bosses. final, as you hear it. When you finish, it is inevitable that you will end up learning the name of one of its characters, since some will help you in your journey, and others will hinder you.
The main mechanics of the game is the character’s ability to use a drone, which, with a simple remote control, we can use for many tasks, and it will accompany us practically all the time. But the goal will always be to continue advancing, opening doors, getting more keys or objects to continue and, in many cases, all this while escaping from enemies.
Everything takes place in this sinister environment, which simulates a kind of surrealist nursery, mixing elements of the imagery most rooted in the so-called “scary pasta”, such as the famous Backrooms, Siren Heads and others known as Five Nights at Freddy’s. We can’t say anything other than the mix that Garten of Banban proposes is opportunistic, but precise, with a very simple and, almost, let’s say, mediocre design, but which gradually acquires a very defined identity.
Duration
Although the first chapter, being free, lasts less than an hour, the rest can last between 3 and 4 hours, depending on how long it takes us to solve them. The fourth, directly the longest of all, extends a lot, with several large areas and a multitude of puzzles that make it extend a little longer than the others. Honestly, I can’t help but recommend that you try at least the first one, since that first “chase” with the bird Opila is a good definition of everything that happens in the game. It’s sinister, it’s a bit scary, but deep down, it’s much more fun.
conclusion
I had already been able to make them on PC and the port to Xbox is totally excellent. With that alone it wins a lot, thanks to its accessibility, but even if we are talking about a scary game, It is true that its target is children between 8 and 12 years old.since they operate in this segment that has disappeared for many years, in which the most “experienced” people in the place, like yours truly, lived in their time with the Nightmares series by RL Stine.
It’s a game that, for those of us used to Resident Evil and Dead Space, will seem like just another indie game among many, but if somehow it’s gone so viral that you can buy the dolls on Amazon , maybe there’s something we’re missing. And that’s it. I really can’t explain the reason for this virality, with its seemingly simple nature.perhaps at a specific moment when a successful streamer served as a catapult for it. But once you play it, you think there is something special about it, something, at the very least, curious, different and worthy of admiration.
*Thanks to Feardemic and Euphoric Brothers for providing us with the analysis material.
Pedro Del Pozo
Good
- The Xbox port is very good
- The puzzles, some will make us rack our brains, even if they are simple
- A new universe that has gone viral
The bad
- Graphically it’s very bad
- Its simplicity in mechanics
- That the rest of the chapters are not on Xbox
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