Kelly Green Garden Queen

It may be all autumn and orange leaves and ladybug invasions here in North America, but in the magical talking land inside my computer spring has sprung with roses, gophers, greenhouses, and $800 shovels. (During spring the stores jack up the price of shovels and watering cans.)

Let's take a look at Kelly Green Garden Queen, a new gardening game from IWin. In this time management game, you play the role of Kelly Green, a wannabe chef who is forced into taking on the responsibilities of her grandfather's long-suffering flower nursery. As a city girl who escaped most of the green thumb, flower power, hippy ideals of her parents, it looks to be quite a challenge for Kelly. And it is! Luckily her brother Neil is just a phone call away and can step by to lend a helping hand.

The main game screen shows part of Kelly's flower nursery. (You can scroll around by dragging the mouse while holding down the right mouse button.) This slightly muddy patch of ground was wisely purchased by Kelly's grandfather when he noticed the township had installed a payphone on the private lot. Unfortunately that put the nursery in a terrible court battle for years, but now things have been settled and Kelly is free to use the payphone as her business line. Awesome!

The game is divided into levels, each the length of a day in-game, during which many customers will place an order for flowers, milk, butter, and even leftover dirt. Some customers show up in person while others just call the number on the payphone. Your goal is to fulfill all their orders before the day finishes. As this is a time management game, that involves lots and lots of clicking!

Click on empty slots in your garden to place a pot in the depression. Click on the pot to fill it with soil. Click on a seed packet, then click on the pot yet again to plant a seed. When growing, the plant needs water, click on it to bring over the watering can. And finally, click on the fully grown plant to give it to the customer (or store it in your shed for later). Some plants must be grown outside; others must be grown inside your greenhouse. A few must spend time in both!

As is usual in the genre, customers arrive with a string of hearts representing their happiness with your customer service. If you take too long to deliver their order, they'll lose hearts. That means a smaller tip for Kelly Green, and less money to reinvest in her new business. And of course if the customer loses all his or her hearts, they'll cancel the order and leave. You think they'd be more understanding of a naïve city girl who grows plants to order - perhaps the worst way to run a flower nursery! However if you can stock your storage shed in advance and sell a customer flowers from there immediately (like a real business) you do get a nice bonus.

Many customers ask that their flowers be assembled in a bouquet. In this mini-game of sorts, you get to choose which type of vase to put the flowers in and you have the option of adding a decoration. If the customer smiles when you select a vase, that's the one they want. If they frown like you just told an off-color farming joke, they don't like your selection. You also get to arrange the flowers in the vase. If the customer is pleased with your creation, they'll regain a heart or two and your tip will increase. (You can auto-fill the vases when this "minigame" starts to get tedious.)

When customers get impatient, as they always do, you can hand them a bottle of lemonade to calm their nerves. If it was my nursery, I'd be handing out Dr Pepper. Customers who phoned in an order can be reassured by calling them and telling them their order is almost ready... whether it is or not. That's an old gardening trick.

There are other things to keep track of as well. The wind-powered water pump sometimes needs primed, and Daisy the cow is a constant mooing, pawing, cow-bell of an annoyance. Crows, aphids, and gophers sometimes attack your plants. Luckily you don't have to scroll around to find Daisy or the water pump, you can click on its icon in the corner and add it to Kelly's queue.

Between levels you have the option of purchasing outrageously marked up upgrades for your nursery. (Note: I'm reviewing this game in 2009 and it's crazy for a watering can to cost $1300 or a bottle of lemonade to cost $30. Perhaps IWin designed this game for a future, inflated, economy.) You can also rearrange your garden layout. Hint: take advantage of this option to find a layout where Kelly and Neil have to walk as little as possible between locations. You can move not only your purchased upgrades but other things as well.

I found Kelly Green Garden Queen game to be very frustrating a few levels in, but it improved immensely once Neil was on the scene and running around helping Kelly. Then the game became much more satisfying as I was quickly able to fill empty nursery slots with pots and soil in preparation for future orders. If anyone ever writes a walkthrough for this game, the first piece of advice should be to always be preparing pots and soil for new plants. Plants you grow but aren't ordered by customers can be sold wholesale, and your prepared garden carries over to the next level!

Everything on the nursery screen is rendered in colorful 3D graphics that are functional but a bit bland in style. I guess I just like a more cartoony look to my gardening games.

Review by Uesugi
Casual Explosion