Saucy Mustard VS Steam #1: Blueberry Garden

Steam has garnered a reputation for fostering massive game backlogs. When games are routinely on sale for 90% off, what kind of asshole would you have to be to pass on that? It doesn't matter that you have zero interest in Xtreme Granny Racing, it's only 2 dollars.

That is the Steam collection of one teh bekka, AKA Bekness, AKA Mustard, AKA DJ Nutbug. Shockingly, a great deal of these games are unplayed, or played very little. Her and I have thus endeavored to play and review every one.

First up is Blueberry Garden, whatever that hell that is.

As it turns out, Blueberry Garden is a small independent game. That means it's weird on purpose. You play the role of a slickly dressed Puffin thing.

Lookin' sharp.

The set up is this: Some faucet is pouring water, so stack up things because yeah. Scattered throughout the minimalistic environment is a collection of giant odds and ends, such as a book, a camera, an apple, an hourglass and some other shit. One thing that bothers me about this game is the scale of everything compared to everything else. Puffin Gent is ostensibly man-sized. Trees in the environment and wildlife are properly tree and wildlife sized, while tomatoes and pencils are bigger than Godzilla's dick.

Right: Yeah, yeah, this all seems right. Left: The hell?

What makes finding these items more difficult is the need for certain items to navigate the environments. Eat a blueberry and you can fly higher to reach one item, eat a starfruit so you can go underwater to find another. These things may not always be close to one another, so you'll have to carry them around the level. And to make sure you're nice and stressed, the faucet causes the water at the bottom of the world to constantly rise, so it's a matter of maximizing every second. If you don't get every item just so, you can paint yourself into a corner and then you're just fucked.

And sometimes you're the one doing the fucking.

And if that all doesn't make it hard enough, sometime the game's code decides to just choke on dick out of nowhere. Objects will obstruct your path and refuse to move, items will phase through walls and disappear, end even the Puffin isn't immune to a bit of glitchiness.

So that's Blueberry Garden. It's difficult and glitchy and there's only one piano song that loops over and over again and the controls are awkward. It should really look at that in itself.