Our Review of Prune

April 20, 2016
The Bulgogi
Reviews
1 Comment

I think it took a lot of guts for Time magazine to award Game of the Year to a game that wasn’t The Witcher 3 (obviously), Fallout 4 (for the main stream gamers), Life is Strange (for the indie set), or Her Story (for something truly innovative). Prune is not as ambitious as any of those titles are but it still provides a subtle, beautiful experience. Sure, it doesn’t get as deep as Life is Strange or Her Story or require as many hours as The Witcher or Fallout 4, but after spending a few hours playing through the game, I can see why Time was so smitten.

It’s hard to overstate the simple beauty of Prune.

Prune is a casual puzzle-game on the IOS in which you help trees grow by cutting off dead branches. You start a round by swiping the screen which sprouts your tree. The tree will extend towards the nearest light source and, once in the sunlight, your tree will rapidly expand and blossom. Getting to the light can be tricky as obstacles are often in your way and your tree often extends in many unproductive directions. As the title suggests, pruning some unproductive branches is key and allows your tree (which seems to have some kind of constant mass) to extend further towards the light. Once your tree is large enough to bloom, you win the level.

Ugh, these red blobs will ruin your day.

Prune’s gameplay fits perfectly with the IOS. With a finger swipe, you eliminate branches that allow your tree to grow different directions. Every now and then you’ll need to gain just a painstaking last inch and you’ll have to enlarge the screen for a particularly surgical slice, fortunately, the controls accommodate do an excellent job accommodating your movements. Hazards get added as you progress, like enormous objects that block the sun and stunt your tree’s growth or red spheres that poison your tree on contact, forcing you to start over. The most frustrating obstacle for me was the occasional clumsy finger-swipe that could restart the entire stage.

These trees pick some of the worst places to grow.

While the gameplay is pretty great, Prune achieves real beauty by setting this casual adventure in some barren wastelands and soulless, grimy environments. Prune hints that your plantlife represents the start of a return to nature for some kind of desolated world. By creating your plants among the whirling industrialization and empty deserts, you’re beautiful life in an empty world. It’s pretty great if you think about it and it’s a solid puzzle game if you don’t.

Red blobs, pipes, whirling blades, it’s almost like they don’t want trees growing in here.

THE BEST PART: The simple game play, the beautiful visuals, and the haunting themes are all pretty cool.

THE WORST PART: The fact that an errant finger swipe can restart a whole level can be annoying and the game, like many IOS games, is an all-too-brief few hours.