They say you should never give a pet as a present, you just never know if the person you are giving it to has enough time to care for it well. That is unless you are the Chinese Emperor and you are giving the pet to the Japanese Emperor, he has plenty of people to help him out. And that is where you – the player – comes in. It is your job to care for the animal by growing food and a safe environment for it to live in. And did I mention that this pet is a panda?
Now you are all working on the same bamboo garden, looking after the same panda, only Joe might want to grow only his favourtie type of bamboo, while Mary thinks the garden will look great with a variety of bamboo, and Derek thinks the bamboo should be trimmed like a hedge, but Grace thinks it should grow tall and wild, and Dennis just wants to encourage the panda to go around and eat all the bamboo that everyone is so carefully growing.
And on top of that there is the whole thing about weather and water and stuff that is important for plants to grow which I am unaware of as the only plants I can successfully grow are Australian natives because in this climate they pretty much take care of themselves.
Takenoko is a beautiful little game. To hear more of what we think about it listen to this episode of All Mana of Things.
