Wylde Flowers
OpenCritic Rating
Top Critic Average
Critics Recommend
Wylde Flowers Trailers
✨ Wylde Flowers ✨ | Gameplay Launch Trailer
🍃 Wylde Flowers 🍃 | Coming to Nintendo Switch & Steam in 2022 — Full Trailer
Critic Reviews for Wylde Flowers
At its core, Wylde Flowers is much more of a narrative-driven social simulation game than a game about farming and other such activities. The surface-level nature of some of the game's elements could be a problem were it not for the fact that Wylde Flowers absolutely excels at the story it's trying to tell utilizing a brilliant cast of characters. With Wylde Flowers, players get an eclectic game where they can brew potions and cast spells while somehow also enjoying a fairly grounded, small-town life alongside unique characters. While it may not be the most complex title on some fronts, Wylde Flowers succeeds at telling a bewitchingly beautiful story.
Wylde Flowers is what you get when you take a farming/life sim, such as Stardew Valley, and focus more heavily on the narrative and characters. A constant shift of events and huge amounts of voiced lines brings this world to life, even if that focus does mean the simulation aspects of the gameplay are reduced. With a lovingly detailed world and equally lovely examples of diversity, you could do a lot worse than spend your week playing Wylde Flowers.
It was perhaps around the time I found myself feeding mulberry leaves to my silkworms so they could produce the silk I need to run through my loom in order to make the fabric required to produce the parachutes the island's meteorologist had requested for her research balloons… somewhere in that long chain of intertwined chores, anyway… that I realised Wylde Flowers was indeed a very good chore game. And by this point my wife was very much in agreement.
The sense of colour isn't just in looks, meaning Wylde Flowers is an island highly worth visiting and another Aussie indie classic.
The developer uses the term “cottagecore” a lot to describe Wylde Flowers, but I feel that reduces it to just being a trend. Wylde Flowers is so much more than that: it’s heartfelt, inclusive, clever, and witchy. It’s the kind of game that makes you feel at home, and the kind of game you want to come home to. It’s a must-play game that I’d recommend to anyone, and that’s darned impressive considering it’s Studio Drydock’s first game (but not surprising if you go to its website and read about the resumes of people behind it).
Wylde Flowers' comforting ambience will surely be a hit amongst its target audience. It sticks to the Farming Sim/RPG formula in tried and true gameplay structure and focuses on the relationships amongst the citizens of Fairhaven and fully voiced characters to set it apart from similar games.
I was pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed the cute, cartoony graphics and simplicity of the gameplay. Nothing overly complicated, no convoluted storyline or frustrating controls. While the game isn’t perfect, it was still a fun way to kill some time and enjoy what I love about the genre while avoiding what I don’t like about it.
Wylde Flowers is a nice game in some aspects. After spending a good bit of time with the game for this review, it does succeed as a simulation, farming, and crafting fun. However, you might want something deeper to really get involved in and feel like you are part of the family.
