The bottom-of-the-screen idle genre has grown rapidly over the last few years. And I am here for it. From Rusty’s Retirement to Fish To Dish, I am there. Unfortunately, this also means that I’ve rinsed the genre dry. So I was more than ready for a new workplace companion when Petunia’s Purgatory came across my feed.
Your New Afterlife
After an untimely passing, poor Petunia has been given a second chance at life. Planting and cultivating crops casually over time, her goal is to fulfil challenge requests and deliver goods to the creature living in the barn. All the while, she tries her best to keep her sanity intact.
Petunia isn’t alone in her endeavours, as creatures named sprites can be hired to work alongside her. These sprites can water, harvest and craft, automatically collecting resources over time. In this regard, Petunia’s Purgatory is much like Rusty’s Retirement and other bottom-of-the-screen games. However, there is one rather unique and interesting twist.
Insane In The Membrane
From the outset, Petunia’s Purgatory has a cute yet twisted design. The crops are creepy parodies of IRL items or given names you would expect to find in a Halloween-themed pop-up restaurant. Even the decorative items and sprites are creepy and have somewhat gross animations. It’s cosy, yet creepy, and calls me back to my Ruby Gloom era.
Pergatory does have its downfalls. Petunia’s sanity will rise and fall depending on which crops you plant and harvest. It’s up to you to manage her sanity levels while keeping your stores filled for crafting and luring animals into your farm for sacrifice. If you fail in this regard, and her sanity drops too low, things will begin to go very wrong.
Although in actuality, these things are largely just visual glitches or colour changes that don’t really affect your game, they were fun and did catch me out a few times. I’ll leave them for you to discover on your own, though.
Pixel Perfect
I’m really enjoying the pixel art resurgence on Steam at the moment. The attention to detail and intricate animations are things of beauty, and Petunia’s Pergatory is no different. The user interface isn’t quite as aesthetically pleasing as other idle games, but it was still easy to navigate.
Petunia’s Twitch Integration
If I can play an idle game with my Twitch chat, it is an automatic “add to Wishlist” for me. Petunia’s Purgatory allows your chat to join as sprites to help with maintaining your farm. Not only did this give me a boost in completing my missions, but my chat enjoyed the engagement.
This feature worked really well, and I ran into no issues setting it up. I wouldn’t mind having my stream information saved in the menu, so I didn’t have to sign in each time. But I can imagine this was just an oversight which could (hopefully) be easily fixed in an update.
Purgatory For Life
Petunia’s Purgatory is a great workplace companion to give you something to check in on between tasks. There are multiple challenge runs to try once you’ve finished the initial game, giving it longevity, and the achievements are not so easy that you can finish them in one session.
The creepy, spooky themes won’t be for everyone, but I thought they were a nice take on an otherwise cosy formula.
Platforms: PC
Publishers: Level Up Gaming
Developers: Dead Possum Games
Played On: Steam
Key Provided By: Press Engine
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