The Lost Gardens

I want to champion small games, genuinely I do, and there is something quietly affecting about The Lost Gardens' central image: an ancient robot called the Caretaker, dormant and forgotten, shaken awake by an unseen force to push back against a creeping corruption called Fear. That premise carries emotional weight, and the post-apocalyptic isometric world Rabbit Hole Studios built around it has an atmosphere that punches above the studio's weight class. The Wetlands, the game's first full region, moves through decayed waterlogged environments with a muted, melancholic palette that does a lot of the world-building on its own. There is craft here, and you can feel the small team's genuine investment in what they were making. Mechanically, the game blends real-time combat with light puzzle-solving and a layer of RPG progression. You unlock weapon upgrades across three tiers in the current build, discover permanent stat boosts by exploring off the beaten path, and a companion system ties into your kit at level one. The skeleton of something more ambitious shows through: an alignment mechanic shaped by gameplay choices that was meant to branch the story and alter the environment was planned for later regions, and boss encounters themed around specific fears, starting with the Fear of Unknown dungeon inside the Wetlands, give the enemy design a conceptual backbone that most micro-budget games never bother with. When it works, the loop of exploring sub-dungeons, uncovering memory unlocks, and tinkering with your stat build has a genuine pull to it. Here is where I have to be honest with you, because honesty is the whole job. The last developer update was over seven years ago. The game entered Early Access in October 2017 with one region, five sub-dungeons, and a roadmap promising six additional regions, controller support, achievements, and a branching story. None of that arrived. Steam itself flags the abandoned development timeline on the store page. Achievements were reported as broken by community members who still cared enough to post about it. The full vision, those thematic regions built around Fear of Heights, Fear of Darkness, Fear of Ugliness, a digital Fear of Viruses, never materialised. What you are buying today is exactly what launched in 2017: a slice, not a whole. The 94% positive rating across a small number of user reviews reflects honest goodwill toward the concept and the people behind it, not a finished game. Rabbit Hole Studios won a fan favourite award at a local games event that year and clearly had real community warmth around them. That warmth is real. But warmth does not patch abandoned Early Access content. If you are drawn to the atmosphere, the robot-caretaker mythology, or the post-apocalyptic isometric puzzle-platformer flavour, understand that what you get is roughly an introductory chapter with a skeleton crew of features. For players who can find peace in an unfinished but atmospheric fragment, there is something here. For anyone expecting a complete arc, this is the wrong stop.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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