Garden of Gears

Garden of Gears mixes a relaxing garden sim with light engineering. You build little clockwork contraptions to water, prune and harvest, then sit back and watch your machines do the work. There's a genuine joy in getting a chain of gadgets running smoothly.

It rewards tinkering without punishing failure. A broken contraption just stops; nothing dies, nothing resets. That makes it a great wind-down game, though min-maxers will find plenty to optimize if they want.

The progression slows down a bit in the mid-game and could use more machine types. Even so, the loop of designing, watching and tweaking is quietly addictive. A warm little sim for the end of a long day.

What we liked

• Relaxing build-and-watch loop
• Failure is low-stakes
• Deep enough for tinkerers