At less than three hours of unique content, Potata: Fairy Flower feels more like a generous demo than a retail release.
Singleplayer.
Potata: Fairy Flower is a really cute and colourful game that is sure to please young children due to its easy-to-pick-up controls, simplistic gameplay, family-friendly content (PEGI 3), and a general feeling of cheeriness that makes it a great game for children or for older gamers who feel like a palate cleanser between more mature titles.
Potata: Fairy Flower is one of the shortest games I have ever reviewed, with a completionist run being possible in just over 2 hours, making it just barely long enough to disqualify users from a refund on Steam and Xbox store, something which is sure to annoy buyers who purchased Potata: Fairy Flower expecting a game of more traditional length (8+ hours).
While Potata: Fairy Flower is fairly priced on PC ($8.99) and moderately priced on console ($14.99) when taking into account how short the game is, Potata: Fairy Flower is overpriced, coming in at around $4.20 per hour on PC and an eye-watering $7.30 per hour on console, giving it one of the worst hour/dollar ratios I have ever seen.
Potata: Fairy Flower was developed and published by Potata Company. This tiny development studio appears to consist of just two members, which is likely why Potata: Fairy Flower is so short.
I have re-read the title “Potata: Fairy Flower” several times, and it still doesn’t make sense to me; while we know the protagonist is called Potata, she is never referred to as being a Fairy, nor would the term “Fairy Flower” be correct even if it was referring to her.
I then pondered if the title referred to something she encountered and perhaps was lost in translation, and that appears to be the answer; however, it would have made more sense to title the game “Potata and the Fairy’s Flower” or “Potata and the Fairy Flower”, instead of Potata: Fairy Flower, which not only is terrible English but is also one of the most easily forgettable titles I have yet to encounter.
Potata: Fairy Flower peaked at just 11 concurrent players at launch on Steam and appears to have only been played by three people on Steam during the entirety of 2023.
While Potata: Fairy Flower eventually allows players to directly attack enemies (roughly 20% into the game), the vast majority of Potata: Fairy Flower’s gameplay revolves around solving a variety of puzzles and using items to progress through the world, such as lulling carnivorous plants to sleep with sleep inducing berries or creating bridges out of planks of wood.
Because of this focus, Potata: Fairy Flower feels reminiscent of some of the best games of the Playstation 1 era, when puzzle and item-based 2D (and 2.5D) platformers were in their golden era, with legendary titles such as Tomba! 1 & Tomba! 2 helping to introduce mechanics more traditionally found in top-down (Zelda) and isometric titles (C-RPGS) to the 2D (and 2.5D) platformer genre, which at the time was fighting to remain relevant in the early days of 3D visuals, where many in the industry seriously considered the possibility of 2D games quickly becoming a thing of the past, in the light of the 3D revolution.
Thankfully, that was not the case, and looking back over two decades later, we can see that while 3D visuals have continued to improve, 2D (and 2.5D) games remain as popular as ever, with thousands of new and popular titles being released each year.
Potata: Flower Fairy is a action video game developed and published by Potata Company, it was released on 16 December 2019 (PC), 2 August 2023 (PS5/Xbox Series X|S) and retails for $8.99+.
Potata: Flower Fairy is available on the following platforms: Nintendo Switch, PC, Playstation 4, Playstation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.
On average Potata Fairy Flower takes between 2.5 and 2.5 hours to complete.
Estimated completion times are derived from various sources and may vary based on the skill level of each player.
The following peripherals are officially supported:
Potata Fairy Flower is rated PEGI 3+ and contains no offensive content.
