Winner of IGF's 2009 Grand Prize for Indie Games, Blueberry Garden is way underrated. Gamespot didn't get it at all!
The proper place to begin with concerning Blueberry Garden, is that while there is some relatively simple puzzle solving involved, Blueberry Garden is more akin to a sandbox game of exploration rather than a puzzle solver or platformer. Certainly its genre-defying, which is a big plus for it, but its not about genre as much as its about play and experimentation.
For starters, Blueberry Garden boasts its own real-time self-perpetuating environment. Pretty cool for a game who's essence is on the simple side. Flowers and trees will repopulate and spread based on how their seeds fall, as well as through your own machinations, which comes from the puzzle-solving aspect of the game. Not only that, but the environment will continue to grow and evolve everywhere at once, not just on screen. It's not uber-complex, but it is a very enjoyable aspect of the game.
In terms of gameplay, Blueberry Garden is half puzzle half platformer. In the opening sequence, you'll note a large faucet which is pouring out water, and it doesn't take a rocket-scientist to figure out that as the water levels rise, you'll be running out of room on the ground floor of the world, and you'll ultimately be doomed if you don't figure out a way to climb the heights of the world to turn the thing off. So off you go to do just that. However, its not a simple matter of climbing a ladder on up. You'll need to capture a bunch of objects lying around the world to build a ladder of sorts up into the sky so that you can fly over to the faucet. The capture of these objects (including apples, pencils, hourglass, dice etc) makes up the majority of the straight-forward play. Since the objects are not in easy to reach places, you'll need to figure out how to obtain them. Thankfully, by eating the fruit of the local vegetation, you'll gain timed-abilities which allow you to do things like fly higher, breath underwater, and even teraform terrain.
But you'd be missing the point if you just played Blueberry Garden as a timed puzzle solving game. What really elevates this game is the ability to explore the world laid out, partaking of each fruit, spreading the seeds of the vegetation, and experimenting as a scientist-biologist. It's this that the GS review totally misses, and its this that I think solidified Blueberry Garden's Grand Prize Award in 2009. Now, it's all to easy to forget about such experimentation as the water rises, and it could certainly be faulted for such a mechanic that involves time limits in a game of exploration and innovation. Sure enough. But once the faucet is turned off, you'll feel much freer to sink into the game as I think it was meant to be played.
The sound and visual art are quite good i think (again, despite the GS review), and the art in particular. The outline sty*le works quite well, with its hand-drawn sensibilities, and the start black and white field on which the green of the vegetation and the color of the fruit lies allow the environment to really stand out.
Bottom line: Blueberry Garden is a solid game of experimentation hidden beneath the introductory layer of a puzzle-platformer, and when you play it I think its easy to see why it won the Grand Prize in 2009. Ambitious, crisp, and full of loving attention, Blueberry Garden is a great game.
Rating 9/10