I’m not sure if this applies in other countries, but in England we have this thing where you’ll stroll down some random suburban street without a care in the world, and stumble on a house that has been absolutely overrun by garden gnomes. A house on which garden gnomes have either settled, like the avian hoodlums in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, or from which they have erupted, like the malignant mushrooms of Annihilation.
A hundred clay and plaster eyes catch yours, unblinking; a hundred figures seemingly freeze in the act of pushing a toy wheelbarrow or smoking a pipe. The tune you were whistling dies in your throat as you hurry past into the reassuring shadow of the relatively gnomeless bungalows to either side. Gardening sim Horticular is like that, but with an even greater sense of contrast, because it asks you to resettle a desolate planet. There is no generic urban scenery to hurry onto, here. There is only bare, cracked earth. And the gnomes.
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