#33in28 – The Gardener is Dead Review

The Gardener is Dead is a ghostly storytelling game by Ginger (@inkyginge). The game is currently on Kickstarter and doing well, and I think it deserves a little extra attention! I reviewed a draft version of the game provided to me by Ginger, so there is a chance something will change by the final version. That being said, this game uses at least 1 six-sided die, a deck of playing cards, paper, pencils, and tokens (pieces of paper or index cards will do). It’s intended for anywhere from one to four players, but I’m looking at it as a journaling game.

An illustration of a skull full of dirt and growing plants and fungi with a small gardener's trowel dug into the dirt.

Hi all! Another #33in28 review coming at you – this time one that’s actively on Kickstarter! Check out The Gardener is Dead in my review below and on Kickstarter before time runs out!

The Gardener is Dead

By Ginger (@inkyginge)

The General Idea

Genre Tags: solo, multi-player, lonely, journaling, death, loss, nature, cards, dice, plants
Replayable? Yes!
Actual Play Available? Many examples in text
Length: Short, 2-3 hours, Journaling (At your own pace)

The Gardener is Dead is a ghostly storytelling game by Ginger (@inkyginge). The game is currently on Kickstarter and doing well, and I think it deserves a little extra attention! I reviewed a draft version of the game provided to me by Ginger, so there is a chance something will change by the final version. That being said, this game uses at least 1 six-sided die, a deck of playing cards, paper, pencils, and tokens (pieces of paper or index cards will do). It’s intended for anywhere from one to four players, but I’m looking at it as a journaling game.

The Gardener is Dead cover with a hand-drawn font of the title in white on black.

In The Gardener is Dead, you tell the story of a gardener living in a small cottage with a long-abandoned garden, and explore memory, isolation, and conversations with ghosts in this place that is so in need of care. It includes the X-Card and Lines and Veils as a recommendation for safety, but also notes that you can use any safety tool that works for you. You can draw a map of your garden and draw the elements, but that is optional, and the priority is just marking things out and indicate them so that you can help guide your choices in-game.

Each turn you play is a season, and a year is represented by four turns, so as you play through each year you can take lessons learned and carry them forward. You respond to prompts to tell the story of where the garden is, how long it’s been abandoned, what kind of garden it is, and various elements of the garden. You name plants, eerie things, and objects in the garden, then ghosts and who they are. You then define your Gardener, and start officially playing, consulting the Oracle playing card deck to start scenes based on prompts. There is a countdown, subtracting a d6 roll at the end of the year, until the Gardener dies. 

I really love that this game puts so much control in the hands of the players to tell the story, but constrains the story by time and by guiding with prompts, and yet still allows them to be creative with the map and various elements of the garden. It gives a sense of ownership over the story that is so hard sometimes to achieve without having the story run wild. I also love that the game allows for replayability, and a potential for legacy play by carrying on the maps, items, and ghost of the Gardener. I think that’s fantastic in an approachable indie roleplaying game like this. 

An illustration of a skull full of dirt and growing plants and fungi with a small gardener's trowel dug into the dirt.
Illustration by Fernando Salvaterra.

The Gardener is Dead is a haunting and creative storytelling game by Ginger (@inkyginge). It allows players to take control of the narrative to create ghosts, elements of the garden, and the garden itself as they tell the story of their Gardener. Grow your own haunts and check it out on Kickstarter today!