While I know there’s a whole generation of folks who pretty well grew up enjoying the chance to watch streamers play games like Five Nights at Freddy’s, freaking out at jump scares and antics, I’ve never had a great opinion of them as games to play. While the quality can vary, and I’ll admit some of the lore developed at least tried to make the most of the situation, I tended to find the gameplay pretty lean more often than not. Of course, with the great success of that series, imitators were an inevitable outcome, and Garten of Banban is absolutely one of those, changing up the setting and details, but fundamentally working in a very similar headspace.

Now, for those who couldn’t get enough of the 7 games already released in this series on the Switch, there’s an opportunity to go back and see where everything began. I suppose for real Banban lore hounds this could be an exciting prospect, but for anyone who isn’t it will likely not be the first game you’d want to play in the series, since you’d lack any context for things.

In terms of the overall experience this conforms to what you’d expect from this sort of series. You’ll need to explore the areas you’re able to get to, work out puzzles that will allow you to move along further, and try to keep your wits about you. While there are some pretty gruesome horror-ish games out there on the Switch, this isn’t one of them, generally content to build a sense of unease but never going terribly far. This does allow it to qualify as potentially being more appropriate for some younger gamers who are already on board with the series, but there’s no doubt that it’s an acquired taste. If you’ve enjoyed the other games in the series, and are curious to see how things originally shook out, it could be a fun diversion for a little while though.