I got into Balatro late, far too late to earn any respect from my peers, but once I did it engulfed my life for months. I eventually had to go cold turkey at the beginning of 2025, but that hasn't stopped my eyes from wandering towards it every time I look for a new game to play on Steam.
But now I've found something else to quell my urges, and no it's not a therapist. I'm actually talking about Chosen Garden, a new roguelike deckbuilder that's set to come out March this year. I've been playing its little demo, and I have a wonderfully awful feeling that it's going to do the job too well.
In Chosen Garden, you take care of a magical garden, planting loads of fruit, veg, and flowers, alongside adopting cute animals and having to deal with arduous weather conditions that turn up once every three rounds.
You start with a 9x9 plot full of plants. You'll then get a limited number of turns to harvest said plants in a 3x3 harvest zone (you can expand beyond this tile by tile). There'll be a point goal each you need to meet or exceed each round and you can improve how many points you get depending on what plants you have in your garden, as well as other perks like animals and tools.
Each plant will also have a unique perk. For example, when you harvest a Cherry Blossom, you can add the adjacent tiles to the harvest zone, and when you harvest a wild flower, you get +5 Base or +5 Mult. Depending on how successful your harvest is, you'll also get coins which you can spend on getting new plants, tools, or animals at the end of each round. It really does follow the same formula as Balatro, which is good news, as if you played that, then you'll catch onto Chosen Garden quickly.
I started my second run on the Zoo map pretty relaxed. I'd been given comfort grass as a base plant that, when harvested, gives a +4 Base or +4 Mult and had chosen the Spinach as the accompanying starting plant, which adds a random 0-12 to the Mult alongside a small chance to gain 20 coins.
I'd found a mythical dragon, adopted a dog, planted watermelon seeds, and it was all going so well until round six. The adverse weather condition kicked in, and I was in the midst of a sandstorm. During this round, my first harvest would give no score, not too bad right? Wrong.
I decided to be smart and pick a small plot to harvest in the top right corner, 4x4, not much of a waste, but I hadn't realised my new Pea plant that was in the harvest zone would randomly add directly and indirectly adjacent uncommon and rare plants to the harvest zone, meaning I nearly took out half the grid in a round that would count to nothing. Dammit. Now I only had four more turns to gain 1000 points and half the grid to work with.
Needless to say, it didn't end well. Ending short of 300 points, I wasn't able to get across the point threshold, and my round ended there. It's ok though, games like this are meant to be short-lived, until the fateful day the stars align, and you manage to go on a generational run. I am still waiting for that day, but I hope it will come soon.
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