🌲 Building a little garden 🌹

Garden Galaxy

A tiny world just for you



Garden Galaxy logo. The title is surrounded by little drawing of some of the ingame decor items.

Developer: Anneka Tran
Publisher: Anneka Tran
Genre: Sandbox

This is an interesting little building game. It’s not a crafty kind of game, in fact, building anything has a bit of luck to it.

You start out with just a tiny little bit of white space with blocks you can move around if you so choose. In order to start getting items to build with, you need only wait for time to pass.


Screenshot from Garden Galaxy showing a plain white square with a yellow and brown clay pot in the center. A tiny triagular creature with a flame on its head is poking out of the top. A similar creature is to the left of the pot, with a green arrow pointing at them. The dialogue one the screen from the pot creature says: After some time my frends will visit your garden. Below is a propmp that says Click on the Visitor.

When you leave the game open, even if you’re not focused on it, little “visitors” appear, tiny cone shaped entities with little flat flames on their heads. If you click one, it will leave behind a random coin. Whichever coin you get determines what set of items you’ll get something from. You then toss these coins into the little pot you get at the start, and the little dude inside spits out a random decor or terrain item for you. If you don’t like what you can get, you can toss it back in for a partial refund.

There are several different types of coins, each with their own unique look. These coins all have their own subset of items they can give you, and each item you toss back in gives you 1/3 of the coin for that set.

At the start, you end up mostly getting a lot of objects and not a lot of surface tiles. This is a huge problem because you start running out of space very quickly, and have to pick and choose what kinds of things you want to keep without even knowing what else is out there. Thankfully, you can do things such as stack certain items, place plants in flower pots or grass tiles (and other natural ground tiles), or even place items on stairs and slopes.


Screenshot from Garden Galaxy. There are a few more white ground tiles, and most surfaces are covered with various random items including piggy banks, becking cat statues, a streetlapm, a water pump, a lighhouse, a tree, a lantern, several small plants, and a tiny house.

Controls are quite simple. Arrow keys or WASD to pan your map around, Q and E to rotate your map; Q turns it clockwise, E turns it Counter-clockwise. If you left-click a slope or stair, it will change between three different stages. Right-clicking an item will rotate it 45 degrees clockwise.

I eventually learned that you can pick up a stack of coins and throw them all into the magic pot at the same time, and just click the pot to get new items. I like doing this, and its way more convenient once you start getting large amounts of coins at once.


Zoomed in on a scroll decoration item that show the number of visitors.

Part sandbox garden builder, part gacha game (though there’s no microtransactions), part hidden-object-game, and part idle game, the gameplay is mostly just placing things and making neat little worlds. It’s actually quite fun watching your little space start growing as you get more terrain and objects to play around with.


Several grass tiles with flowers, and a few swamp tiles.

Some items have little interactions with each other, such as a fountain spraying a flower causing it to grow, or a fire going out if you water it, or fence posts automatically connecting if they’re next to other fence posts of the same type.

If you go on the community pages on steam, there’s lots and lots of screenshots of peoples’ own little Galaxy Gardens. Some are quite inspirational!


A stack of various coins.

Sometimes you’ll get these little statuettes that you can sell to the pot in exchange for a bunch of items from a specific set.


Screenshot of the item collection catalogue. Highlighted is a frog statue with the description reading: Sell this for lots of swamp items.

It’s a lot like trying to build a lego set but you don’t get to pick which pieces you get. Also you get them one at a time from random people who walk near your house.

Incredibly zen, but requires patience.


A decorated plaza of white tiles with gray tiles down the middle forming a cross shaped path. There is a lattice fence around the perimiter with ivy growing on it, fairy lights on top of the fence, and several plant pots with flowers and little market stalls. in the center is The Pot.
A fountain of gray stone with a frog statue in the middle sitting on a lily pad. The floor surrounding the fountain is red brick.
A zoomed out screenshot showing a grass area with a lake, flowers, and houses, a woods area with a cabin and tents, a small swamp area, and a tiny desert area with cacti, a palm tree, and an animal skull.

Official steam page

Review posted 2024/02/24

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