#terry's vegetable patch

Giggleland's Terrifying Official Demo: Terry's Vegetable Patch [Review & Walkthrough]

fanart for the upcoming game Giggleland!

this is a demo for a game called Giggleland, which is still in development with an unknown release date. there's actually a whole ARG associated with the full game, which adds some interesting context to the demo (and likely the full game) if you want to look into it, but isn't necessary to understand the demo

i understand why people are skeptical of all mascot horror in the year of our lord 2026. i, too, have been burned by the realisation that fnaf wasn't good. but i promise, you will not regret giving this game a chance.

aside from mascot horror, lately i've been disillusioned with the horror subgenre of "horror game that briefly pretends to be another genre". it's quite obvious that a lot of games just do it either to try and ride on the hype of DDLC, or in order to check the box of "contains plot twist" without coming up with a better plot twist. this game does not have this problem, because this game doesn't waste its time pretending to be an innocent game. it's not horror disguised as cute, it's... psychological horror disguised as mascot horror.

the horror is just exquisite. there are minimal jumpscares - small ones, not like the fnaf-style in-your-face style of jumpscares that can be goofy, just small scares that aren't enough to release the tension. walking through the dark environment of this game is a dread-inducing experience as you constantly anticipate something horrible to leap out at you... but instead, more often, nothing leaps out. the horror comes from details you notice, details that have you questioning your own perception - did that change while your back was turned? or was it there all along, without you noticing?

the surface story of this game is as simple as completing tasks and, eventually, trying to escape where you're trapped. there's definitely a deeper story going on, both in terms of the ARG and in terms of easter eggs found in the game itself. the game finally achieves something i've desperately been wanting from games with Hidden Lore and associated ARGs: a game that makes sense and is a good experience on multiple levels, so that you don't have to put active effort into finding things outside of the main game just to understand what's going on

steam deck functionality notes: there are points where you're told to press keyboard buttons you don't have, and you have to figure out which button is E on this layout. there is one optional point where i think it's possible to get softlocked? not as big of a deal as it sounds, the game is very short and the possible softlock is in the first half so it's not such a problem to reset. there is one specific type of scare that happens repeatedly in the game, that i know about from reviews that played it on PC, that doesnt seem to work on the deck, which is disappointing. but for an indie demo on a console it wasnt designed for, i found it to be great

Let me know what you think works best after watching!