PC Gamer - UK (2022-02)

60

75

FREE GAMES REVIEWS

EXPECT TO PAY
Free

DEVELOPER

LumbirBwut

LINK

lumbirbwut.itch.io

NEED TO KNOW

G

ames about connecting with

loved ones, and insta-fail

platformers are – you

would have thought – on opposite

ends of the spectrum, but Grandma

and the Flowers finds a way to mesh

both worlds together. Before every

stage, memories unfold about the

protagonist’s grandmother, who so

loves the flowers you have to bloom

to complete each level.

You make them bloom merely by

touching them – but if you touch

them again they’ll wilt, so you can’t

really backtrack as you run, leap and

wall-jump around each one-screen

stage. Crush even a single flower and

you’ll restart, but bloom all the red

flowers and you’ll beat the level, with

a pat on the back from Gran if you

can see to the yellow ones as well.

This secondary objective doesn’t

grant you any material rewards,

but an encouraging word from a

loved one is always nice.

The story snippets are sweet

enough, adding a morsel of weight to

the minimalist flower dodging, which

gets surprisingly tricky during the

later stages of the game. You need to

plan your route in advance, or (like

me) persist through frustrating trial

and error. The game is a little easier

if you ignore the optional yellow

bulbs, but then Gran won’t be as

happy – unthinkable.

Much of the joy in a platformer

comes from the controls, how it feels

to move in the world, and

unfortunately it feels slightly stiff to

platform. Couple that with my lack of

skill at precision platformers, and I

found myself restarting until I

developed a deep mistrust

of flowers. I’m sorry, Gran,

but the next daisy I see is

getting trampled.

BLOOMING HELL

Smell the roses in GRANDMA AND THE FLOWERS

BELOW: (^) You can cling to the sides of walls.
EXPECT TO PAY
Free
DEVELOPER
Alesan99
LINK
alesan99.itch.io
NEED TO KNOW
BELOW: (^) Use the basket to shift bundles of clothes.
I
n block-pushing puzzler
Hoarder’s Horrible House of
Stuff, you’re not just shifting
arbitrary blocks around to satisfy
the puzzle gods. No, you’re punting
cubes to escape your house, which
has become so crammed with crap
you’re unable to reach the exit.
Blocks are therefore packing boxes,
sofas, and baskets, while your goal is
to make your way to your garage.
It’s a perfect blending of theme and
mechanics, imagining life from a
hoarder’s view. And, after all that
hefting about, the game culminates in
a cathartic moment of liberation.
As for the puzzling, I’ve played
smarter, tighter block-pushing games.
Hoarder’s suffers from not adhering
strictly to a grid. You slide stuff
around more granularly here, and it
feels a little bit slippy, the objects
sometimes shifting diagonally,
requiring some correction. Mistakes
are easy to rectify, with the rewind
button, or by restarting the room. I
didn’t find the puzzles overly
challenging, but it did take a few
attempts to complete each room.
There are a couple of ideas I
haven’t seen in a Sokoban game
before. Firstly the baskets, which you
can carry around and stuff with
blocky piles of clothes. There are also
key-holding barrels, which spew out
their cargo when placed under leaky
ceiling tiles. Nothing mind-blowing,
but ideas that fit in nicely with the
hoarding theme. It’s that theme that
stands out, and it persists all the way
through, taking you from bathrooms
to bedrooms, to hallways and living
rooms full of detritus. Be sure to grab
it for your puzzle
collection, even if you have
to shunt some other files
out of the way first.
FULL HOUSE
Escape rooms in HOARDER’S HORRIBLE HOUSE OF STUFF