The only reason it isn't half of a star is because it was an absolutely hilarious experience. One of the worst games I've ever played, easily. The game crashed once 5 minutes in and sent my computer into constant errors to the point that I had to restart it to fix everything. There's a good chance my computer is completely fried from the fucking Garten of Banban. Took me less than 20 minutes to beat and was hilariously bad, there's no way this game was made without the intent to be so bad that it's good, right? Right??? Overall, Garten of Banban was easily one of the video games that I've ever played, and I think this 19 minute romp was one of the most interesting parts of my entire life. Thank you Jumbo Josh

I played this with a friend watching me and the moment the chairs started fliying and spinning across the room we lost our fucking minds; that, plus the vine booms and Jumbo Josh, fucking sent us.

I’m not gonna dedicate more time to this review than the developers took on making the game: Garten of Banban only holds value in the fever dream-like experience it produces while playing, and it's absolutely shocking how this game fails in almost every department, be it visually, level design-wise or the general concept.

At first, back when I heard of it, I just thought it was a normal bad game that had the misfortune of turning into the poster child of everything that's wrong with modern broader horror, but after seeing more of it and know playing it, I now know better, oh do I understand now.

This is like if someone with zero artistic qualities tried to do a macaroni art version of the Mona Lisa, except that in this case the Mona Lisa isn't even that good. Uninspired, visually overly simplistic and ugly, puzzle logic that seems to be designed by some kind of rat man that has lived in the sewers for 20 years that purely consists on going around on cycles finding stuff and telling a drone to bump into buttons and finding electric pads under FUCKING DESKS, non-existent horror elements, aspirations of being a cash-grab by following a episodic format and having a god-forsaken merch-store, horrible setting that doesn't make any kind of sense at a logical level (the games it follows beat by beat even manage to make their settings at least believable), putrid art-style, poorly designed, vile, unappetizing, disgusting excuse for a videogame it has ever been my displeasure to have entered within the range of my visual field!... and yet, I... I fucking adore it.

This game activates all of the dumbest neurons in my brain, reaching high levels of awfulness while not being absolutely infuriating or boring. It’s a like seeing a clown car crash, it’s horrible and you can’t stop looking at it, but it’s funny in a very twisted way. It all is just bonkers enough to be endearing, with character designs that are stupid as they are the best things in the universe; Jumbo Josh is an absolute unit and a king and I shall not take any negatives for an answer. And the best part of all of this is that I’m not alone, my friend was also losing his shit at this game, as so did what it seemed like the entire internet, and is a fascinating case almost deserving of study how this preposterous product such at thus could have this effect, but it’s precisely that twisted fun what gives it’s only thing of value.

It’s Garten of Banban the worst thing ever? No, as much as I have trashed on it, it’s at least functional, it at least has a semblance of design, it at least it has kinda neat ideas in theory, at least it’s funny… which may be the bare minimum to ask but hey, at least it does something. I know that it’s its short duration what prevents it from being and absolute shitshow, and I don’t have any kind of doubts that the other chapters wouldn’t be deserving of an extra half-star, but hey, at least I can say of this one that there was an attempt kinda not really.

It's bad, it’s borderline atrocious, but it’s kinda amazing how a game can give me so much joy in a way it didn’t intend at all. This is the definition of a guilty pleasure, except it’s not really a pleasure… ‘’guilty novelty’’, yeah, I think that’s the better way to put it.

This is, indeed, the BOTY.

Bom, vamos lá... Eu vi muitos vídeos sobre esse jogo e todos falaram o qual merda esse jogo era... Porém eu, no auge da minha inocência, pensei:

"Será que esse jogo é tão ruim assim?"

Resposta: Sim... É até pior

Esse jogo consegue falhar em TODOS os aspectos. Os gráficos são nojentos, já vi mapa de GMOD com mais efeitos e mais texturas do que esse jogo. A gameplay é uma merda, os controles são nojentos, os sustos são podres e o jogo ainda consegue LAGAR.

O fato dos 3 outros jogos serem pagos devia ser considerado crime de estelionato. Eu preferia ficar 10 horas seguidas ouvindo em looping todos os Tik Toks da Kinechan do que jogar isso de novo...

Avoid playing this.
It is very obviously a way to get money from kids but ended up getting money from everyone on the internet because it became a ironic meme.
Gave it a 1.0 instead of a 0.5 because I think the concept has some sort of something.

it (and its sequels) are also fun to hate play lol

If a Garten of Banban hater opinionates, I disagree

If a Garten of Banban hater speaks, I ignore

If a Garten of Banban hater fails, I laugh

If a Garten of Banban hater thinks, I despise

If Garten of Banban has 100 fans, I am one of them

If Garten of Banban has 1 fan, I am that fan

If the world is against Garten of Banban, I'm against the entire world

'Till my last breath, I'll support Garten of Banban

There are several words I wish I could say about this game. Many of which I will unfortunately be unable to say without threat of legal action, but I shall try my best.

Speaking from my own experience as a hobbyist and aspiring game developer, Garten of Banban feels much like the kind of projects you throw together when you're just getting your feet wet with a new engine, style, or just game development in general. The kind of unpolished, unoptimized mess of various mechanics jammed into each other that you know isn't anywhere close to a finished product, but still feel proud of just on the basis of getting it working at all. The kind that will never see the light of day, aside from maybe a few friends you send it to being like "Check this out, first time doing this, can't believe it actually works.", knowing full well future attempts will start from scratch now that you know what you're doing. And yet, here it is, published, with a merch link on the main menu.

I was fortunate, having the foresight to enlist a dear friend who shares whatever deep-rooted trauma or mental illness draws me to this style of game. Were it not for their company, I likely would have been driven to my breaking point, and for that, I am thankful. I don't often outwardly express frustration in a non-joking manner, so the fact that I let out an involuntary cry of pure rage at one point goes to show this game's ability to get into your head. In a way, it's almost impressive, given the length and quality.

Graphically, this game looks worse than one made in Roblox. And I'm not talking about the Roblox of today, where there's somehow actual money behind the experiences, I mean the Roblox my elderly, 23-year-old self played as a preteen, where a diagonal cylinder seemed like a greater feat of computer engineering than landing man on the moon.

Short aside, cylinder is such an odd word. It's one of the few words in English where it's spelled almost exactly how it's pronounced, and yet I can never get it right because I'm not used to that being the case.

Anyway, back on topic, almost everything in this game is made up of single color 3D shapes occasionally textured; the visual equivalent of plain, slightly-undercooked pasta, which really begs the question: why does this game run so poorly? I admittedly am rocking a decently old ThinkPad from 2018, but even still, I manage to run games with significantly more graphical and computational demands than this realistically should have. For god's sake, I got through decently modded Skyrim on this ol' boy with more consistent performance. I'd love to say I know the answer, but alas, I have not yet managed to use Blender for more than 20 minutes without getting so frustrated I remove it from my computer, so I cannot speak on the intricacies of 3D graphics.

Now, onto the story.

Now, onto the gameplay. Not great, I gotta say. As I was sorta saying above, it's just a bunch of mechanics thrown together. Due to how short the game is, each new, unrelated mechanic is only really used the one time and never again, barring the "press button with drone" or "press button on wall with correct key in possession." The one time you're introduced to a new gameplay mechanic that builds off an existing one, it is only used for the single "silent tutorial" type introduction puzzle and then never again, it's genuinely hilarious.

During the horror chase sequence, I almost lost my mind. You're forced to run along a snaking platform slowly extending from the wall, and the combination of the slippery movement, single-digit framerate and just my general overreation to the idea of being chased led to me dying over and over and over just from falling off the goddamn platform. Thankfully, it seems the devs learned from their mistake, as they implement invisible barriers later in the same sequence to prevent you from accidentally succeeding in a way they didn't intend, i.e. running straight for the exit instead of pressing a random button on the wall first. A button which is next to a near-identical button that does nothing, that I definitely didn't spend too long mashing before realizing my mistake and getting caught, no sirree.

Why am I doing this, why am I writing this? What compelled me to spend more time than it took playing the actual game writing this review? I don't know. I really don't. I had a miserable time playing this, which really begs the question: Why am I going to play the sequel? Who can say.