Open now · By request
Gardenkin playtest
by Ksivok Games
Return life to a forgotten community garden. Clear the overgrowth, bring back the water, grow crops and flowers, and welcome seven neighbours back one by one, with a rabbit and a hedgehog lending a paw. A gentle, cozy garden restoration game.
It's free to ask. The developer chooses who gets in.
- Access
- By request
- On playtest since
- Nov 7, 2026
- Planned release
- Coming soon
- Developer
- Ksivok Games
- Platforms
- Windows
- Players
- Single-player
- Languages
- English, French, German, Portuguese - Brazil and 5 more
How to join the Gardenkin playtest
- Open the game's Steam page with the Request access button. Sign in to Steam if it asks.
- Request access to the Gardenkin playtest there. It's free and doesn't commit you to anything.
- The developer lets players in, often in batches, so it can take a while. Steam emails you when you're in, and the playtest appears in your library.
New to playtests? How Steam playtests work
How AI is used
AI tools helped create some of the game's content during development. Nothing is generated by AI while you play. The developer personally reviews every piece and reworks it by hand where needed to keep the game's own style.
The developer's own words, from Steam.
About Gardenkin
An envelope on the notice board says the key to the old community garden is free to take, “if you'd like to grow something”. Behind the gate: tall weeds, a dry pump and empty beds. Bring it back to life plot by plot, and the neighbours who once loved it will come back too.
- Clear the overgrowth, get the old pump working again and dig your first beds.
- Weed by hand: pull the weeds, swipe the aphids off and leave the ladybugs be. A clean bed grows faster and gives a little more.
- Twelve plots hide keepsakes of the old garden, each with a story from the neighbour it belonged to.
- Mend the fence and the garden arch, build a bench, a workshop and the shared table where the whole street has supper.
- Carrots, tomatoes, strawberries, berries, flowers, pumpkins, apples and pears, and bees once the flowers bloom.
- Cook every jam, soup and pie yourself in the summer kitchen: peel, slice, pour to the mark and stir before it catches. A recipe shows you the way the first time; after that you cook it from memory.
- Deliver orders to the neighbours and keep the storehouse stocked.
- Later on, save the seeds of sixteen heirloom varieties, from violet carrots to golden tomatoes.
Mira, the garden's keeper, hears the water running again and comes back. The others follow one by one: Theo the carpenter, June the botanist, Rosa the baker, young Eli, Basil with his family orchard and Nora the naturalist.
- Each brings their own requests, small hands-on projects and a reason the garden once went quiet.
- Repeat orders tell you who they're for, and every neighbour has memories to share.
- Hold harvest fairs and gather everyone at the shared table in the evening.
A rabbit gathers ripe crops, a hedgehog takes the surplus to market and can carry orders to the neighbours, and a pond frog waters the beds around the pond. Teach them as the garden grows.
While you play, the garden goes round from a dewy morning to a bright day and a lantern-lit evening, with fireflies and frogs singing by the pond. Rain comes now and then, and the grass parts as you walk through it. It's only the mood: there's no clock, and a missed evening simply comes round again.
- No energy bar and no deadlines on any request. A harvest left too long only turns to compost, and the bed grows again.
- After a break the garden will have grown a little without you, and nothing you've bought is ever lost.
- The story's big evening isn't the end: garden levels with gifts from the neighbours, decor from Theo's shop, a photo album, Nora's field notebook and your gardener's own look.
From the game's Steam page.
