Review for Wylde Flowers
Wylde Flowers is a farming-and-crafting game, in the mold of Harvest Moon, My Time at Sandrock, Coral Island, and so many others. But its strong narrative core may make it of interest to our readers.
As with those games, you spend a lot of time planting and reaping crops, petting your farm animals, mining, and fishing. But you are also a witch, and much of your time is spent crafting witchy things, interacting with the fae, romancing other characters, and performing tasks for your coven to advance the narrative. Once the main story sequence is complete, the credits roll – but in all likelihood, you will not have exhausted the content at that time, and may continue to play, if you are a completionist. (This does mean Wylde Flowers is excellent value for money; I spent something like 100 hours to complete the story, and was tempted to do things like trying to craft all the outfits available, but ultimately decided that my time was better spent on the next interesting game.)
Unusually, for simulations of this type, Wylde Flowers does not have an elaborate character creation system; you play as Tara Wylde, and your gender (female) and initial appearance is fixed. Later on, you can craft different clothing and restyle your hair.
The initial set-up is typical of the genre; you leave a job in the city to manage a farm, in this case because your grandmother is ill and needs help. Also as typical, money is a scarce resource at first, and you have to work to build up your farm. By mid-game, though, money is no longer a big issue, and tasks like grinding for scarce resources to initiate the next upgrade is more of a concern, and can be quite challenging.
The game is notably LGBTQ+ friendly; your romance options include men, women, and a non-binary character; the town hall flies the Pride flag. I like this, obviously, but of course you may have a different reaction. I found only one of the male options remotely appealing (the werewolf dude) and wound up marrying the flirty Iranian town doctor (the game is also racially diverse), but of course you get to choose. The closest to salacious it gets is when your spouse boops you on the nose. Which, you know, okay, I get that they want to keep it PG, but a kiss would be nice.
Wylde Flowers is fully voiced in English, which I appreciate; voice acting does a lot to make the characters feel real, and the world alive (and is rare in this genre). There’s quite a lot of diversity in the voices, too, both in terms of ethnicity and character age.
The ‘witch’ theme is carried not only in the access to spells and potions, but also in terms of fulfilling missions to your coven, unlocking magical areas, and trading with the fae town that shadows your own. It’s critical to the overall story, and you will often find yourself working to advance that narrative over, you know, just making more money from your farm. Indeed, it’s what really differentiates Wylde Flowers from other games of the genre.
The character designs and animations are engaging; not hyper-realistic, but styled in an appealing way. And even if character creation doesn’t offer a lot of differentiation, there are a huge number of outfits to craft, so if fashion is your thing, the gameplay supports it. (I generally dress like a schlub but quite enjoyed crafting outfits for my character.)
In general: Adventure gamers may or may not find that this is precisely their kind of game, but there’s clearly more going on here in terms of story than for most farming-and-crafting simulations. And Wylde Flowers is an excellent example of that genre.
WHERE CAN I DOWNLOAD Wylde Flowers
Wylde Flowers is available at:
We get a small commission from any game you buy through these links (except Steam).Our Verdict:
An outstanding simulation game with a remarkably strong narrative spine. Wylde Flowers is not hugely emotionally impactful, but is good fun – though given its genre, expect a bit of grind.
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