• 10 years ago
The beauty of having my own pick for this category and not having to argue with any one about choosing a game about chopping leaves off plants. Prune is a zen little puzzle game, that has you loping the branches off tree to encourage your seedling to grow towards the light. Cutting off any part of the plant causes equivalent growth elsewhere, but not always where you want it. Once it reaches the sun, it bursts into blooms celebrating your bonsai botany skills. Yes, it all sounds easy, but it doesn´t take long for this little puzzler to start adding enough wrinkles to have you pondering how any tree has ever grown ever. First there are the narrow paths you must take and the distance to the sun that means you must cut your shrub back to the narrowest of stalks reaching towards the sky. But these are simple when set against the red balls of disease that hang in the air plant and the various doors and switches that must be circumvented make it to the sunlight. In principle, none of these challenges are actually that horrible, but the constant organic growth of your seed means that you must think fast when making the necessary cuts. When a branch gets infected, chop it, when it hits a wall, slice it, and all the while hope that its new shoots will be - at least - leaning towards the angle you need it. To really set it off, the whole game is shown with a beautiful ink-blot print aesthetic, with hard black silhouettes and blocks of color showing the action against a pale papyrus styled background. There is more to this one than meet the eye, and you should definately give it a look.

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Tech