Release Date: 03/09/2018
Played On: Win
Available On: Mac / Win
Time Played: 24m
Progress: 3 years of growth
Developer: PanHuoJun
Publisher: INDIECN
When Steam introduced the 'no questions asked' refund system, I saw a lot of people predicting the apocalypse of the indie game. There were heated debates over whether or not gamers would simply play a small game, then refund it because they could. It seemed like anyone making short little games was about to be ripped off royally, making any such endeavour pointless.
Thankfully they were all wrong though, and despite a few rare cases which are often debateable, the refund system hasn't seen wholesale abuse since its inception. There are still a number of small games released every week that manage to survive, which I like to think is purely because people aren't really that cynical anyway. Turns out that most gamers are pretty happy to pay for a small game when it's a genuine project that isn't taking the piss.
I had never refunded a game, until I got my hands on Tree Bonsai, which took all of 24 minutes to convince me that it deserved to be returned. After all, this is why the refund system exists, as it prevents developers from taking a customer's money without actually providing a working product. So even though this is about the game, it's also about how easy it was to get a refund.
First of all though, Tree Bonsai is a game in early access, which already says that it's not going to be a complete experience. However, the Steam page for the game states that it's in early access, because the developer is still figuring out whether to add more trees to the game or not. After all, the sole purpose of Tree Bonsai is to grow and cultivate your very own virtual bonsai tree. Thus, I figured that the game was all but feature complete and it sounded like it would be a nice diversion to add to the library.
Oddly enough, the game has also managed a 'positive' review rating (based on 32 reviews at time of writing), so I figured it might be okay. I suppose that's one thing to remember for the future: a small number of reviews speaks louder than whether they are positive or negative. I'm aware that I often enjoy things that others don't, but usually the Steam review rating is a good way to gauge overall quality, if nothing else.
Additionally, the game was on sale at the time for only a dollar or two, which is an easy price point to try anything. I often think that any game is worth at least a couple of bucks, even if it's not the most polished experience in the world. I don't expect a masterpiece for a dollar, so I'm willing to put up with a lot of flaws along the way, so long as my time spent is leaning into the 'enjoyable' column.
Sadly, Tree Bonsai did not deliver the virtual tree growing simulation that I was looking for. It didn't take long to realise that the Steam description and early access statement was being very generous, and this was not up to scratch. Even so, that's not a deal breaker, but I soon figured out that this was one of the most slapped together games I've ever played.
Granted, I manage to avoid terrible games most of the time, as it's quite easy to spot a risky proposition from screenshots and trailers. However, my initial expectations of Tree Bonsai, was that it would be something similar to the infamous Mountain. Instead of staring at a Mountain in a void, you'd have the chance to grow a little tree, in a totally different void.
Now, I'm not really keen on ripping apart a small little game that someone's working on and trying to make work. I try to focus on positive gaming experiences I've had, which is usually easy thanks to enjoying just about anything that gaming has to offer. The big 'but' coming along is that there are a few little things that always annoy me more than they probably should, and Tree Bonsai features many of them.
The first being a terrible interface, of which there really isn't much at all in Tree Bonsai. Perhaps it's because I come from a design background, but having basic text in random locations on screen, doesn't work as well as some might think it would. Minimalism is an art form in itself and often takes a lot of work to get right. What's more, conveying information through a minimal interface is incredibly difficult and nuanced, so these are not things to be taken lightly.
On first impression, Tree Bonsai looks like a simple and streamlined interface that won't get in the way. It's only once you try and use it and learn the game's mechanics that you realise how dysfunctional and scrapped-together it actually is. The 'minimal' interface is just a nice way of saying that no effort has gone into the aesthetics or functionality at all.
Never mind though, as this is a simple game that shouldn't be hampered by unaligned text, or ambiguous symbols. Except there are more attempts at complexity that fail to function along the way.
Another pet peeve is clunky controls that have no reason to be difficult. I have no problem with games that require complex control schemes and utilise them to immerse you in gameplay and give you freedom of choice. However, when there are only a few controls that are difficult to figure out and they don't always work, we have a problem.
Tree Bonsai only requires you to move the camera and interact with the tree. You'd think that an orbital camera system would be fairly straight forward, but the view zooms and pans randomly as you move around the tree. Often I found myself trying to interact with someone far away, or much too close, because it was the only way I could get a certain part in view.
When you eventually get it in view, you have to determine how to interact with the tree, which fails to be understandable as well. It took me a while to figure out the sequence of mouse button clicks required to select the 'scissors', then prune a shoot on the tree, then pick the fruit, and so on. None of it works how you might intuitively expect it to work, so clunking around and making mistakes ended up being the order of the day.
Then there's all the little things, like how the tree constantly rotates as time passes, except it stops every now and then for no reason. Or how the music seems to play along with time passing, as it stops and jitters along with the tree's random behaviour.
To cap it all off, there are only certain seasons that provide the correct time window for you to interact with the tree in certain ways. It makes sense to have it in the game, but considering I got through 3 seasons in 24 minutes, there's not a lot of time to think and figure out the controls before time stutters by.
Again, I must reiterate that this is an early access game, which means that all of this could be forgiven if it weren't so poorly represented. In fact, if the developer had been up-front about the game's limitations and said "yo, we're nowhere even close to being done" I might not have bothered with it until it's release. Instead the Steam page reads like it's just about finished, but it plays like someone threw it together in an afternoon.
Contrast that with other short little indie games, like Mike Bithell's Quarantine Circular. When talking about that game, Bithell is very clear about what's in the game and how long it takes to play. When you boot it up there are no surprises to make you immediately regret your purpose. The only thing working for or against this kind of game is your own opinion and taste, which means it's a quality product that works as intended.
I get that developers need to be positive about their game, because they want to sell it after all. It's no surprise that early access games are incomplete and potentially filled with problems, but some problems should not be glossed over. As soon as you charge money for something, you have to be held accountable for the way you portray and sell that thing.
With this in mind, even though Tree Bonsai is technically under the 'early access' banner, the Steam page is disingenuous in its message, and says very little about the game's actual state. It's this kind of misleading preamble that fires me up more than anything, and is ultimately the reason that Tree Bonsai became the first game I have every refunded.
The point isn't to rag on a crap game, but to highlight the need for better transparency and perspective. Maybe you do think your product is just about 'done' when the few people who have played it haven't critiqued it objectively, but that doesn't mean it's okay to sell. At the very least the early access program gives unfinished games an excellent way to be honest about the problems in their game and not have it hurt them.
No game is perfect, so we're used to dismissing and putting up with little bits and bobs that frustrate us in games. However, if the good fail to outweigh the bad, then as a consumer I'm going to have a problem. Tree Bonsai manages that rare task of being the one percent, at the wrong end of the scale.