$17.99Cloud Gardens Grow gardens over the ruins
Plant seeds in abandoned places, pile junk around them and let the plants take over.
Is Cloud Gardens worth it?
Cloud Gardens is worth it if…
- you want something calm to unwind with, no timers and no failure
- you like the look of overgrown ruins and abandoned places
- you enjoy tinkering with small scenes more than beating challenges
- you want a short game you can finish in a few relaxed evenings
Screenshots
A game that asks nothing of you
There is no way to lose here. You plant a seed, put objects near it so the plant grows, and when the flowers bloom you harvest them for more seeds. That is the whole loop, and it repeats at whatever pace you feel like. A level fills up a progress meter, but nothing punishes a slow start or a messy layout. It is the kind of game to keep open on a rainy afternoon, half-watching while the vines creep over an old bus. The mood is calm from the first minute to the last, and the only real decision is what kind of garden you want to leave behind.
Ruins worth overgrowing
The campaign takes you through dozens of small dioramas of a world after people: train stations, greenhouses, playgrounds, scrapyards, all rendered in chunky lo-fi 3D. Each scene starts as bare concrete and rust, and your job is to strike a balance between the manufactured and the natural, since every object you place has to end up covered in foliage before you can move on. A seedling climbs a road sign, moss spreads across a car roof, and by the end of a level the same spot that looked dead now looks strangely lovely. The setting is post-apocalyptic, but in the gentlest possible way: humanity is gone, and the leftovers make great planters.
A sandbox for garden artists
Once the campaign has unlocked its catalogue of objects and plants, creative mode hands you all of it with no goals at all. You can build whatever scene you like, from a tidy rooftop planter to a full overgrown city block, and adjust everything freely after placing it. When a garden looks right, the game turns it into a looping video you can export and share, and there is a community of fellow gardeners trading scenes. The catalogue runs from empty bottles and garden gnomes to whole vehicles, so the only real limit is how patient you want to be with the details.
What should you know before starting?
How long does it take to finish?
The campaign is short: a few relaxed hours across its chapters, and some players finish it in an afternoon or two. Creative mode is where the time goes after that, since there is no end to the gardens you can build there. Think of the campaign as a tour that unlocks your toolbox, and the sandbox as the main event.
Is there any music or sound worth mentioning?
Yes. The generative soundscapes by Amos Roddy (composer of Kingdom) are a highlight: calm ambient layers that shift with what you plant and place, so each garden hums along in its own key. The sound alone is reason enough to play slowly.
Can you take pictures of your gardens?
Yes, there is a photo mode where you can pick your angle and adjust things like the fog and the colour of the sky. Finished dioramas can also be exported as looping videos to share online.
Is it hard to learn?
The rules are simple, but the game explains very little, so the first levels can feel unclear until the mechanic clicks: objects near plants make them grow. Once that lands, everything gets easy. The camera is limited to rotating around the scene's centre, which takes a little getting used to.
