Review by: Mike Thompson

Zen games are easy to get into. They help you relax. They are, essentially, therapeutic and calming, and if they're done right they're nothing short of wonderful. When they're not done right, though, they're… well, they're like The Undergarden.

Players assume the role of a fairy-like creature as it explores a series of underwater caverns filled with gardens that you need to help bring to life. In order to do so, you have to collect pollen and then spread it around a level in order to make the plant life bloom. Doing this is wonderful to look at: the levels, which are lovely to begin with, become utterly beautiful once you bring the gardens to life. The colors are delightful, and the overall visual style has a quiet vibrancy that will impress just about anyone who plays the game. Since you don't have a deadline or time limit to meet, you can explore each level to your heart's content before you move on to the next stage.

As you do this, you can also collect "musicians", creatures that play loops of different musical pieces as they trail behind you. Each musician plays one type of instrument piece, and collecting the entire group lets you listen to a complete song. On top of this, these little guys can affect the plants in bloom by changing their overall colors or behavior. Of course, the musicians aren't the only collectible items that appear in the game. Each level contains hidden flowers and plants to uncover, as well as a special gem to find. The game will even tell you how much plant life you've helped grow with a bar that appears at the bottom of the screen.

The Undergarden's main weakness is that, in spite of a promising start, it never actually feels like it goes anywhere. You keep on waiting for things to get interesting, but they never do, and that’s when the frustration sets in. The level puzzles aren't always obvious, and there are several instances where you'll become stuck after successfully solving them. When this happens, players have the option to jump back to the most recent checkpoint and hopefully avoid getting stuck when they re-attempt the problematic puzzle. Unfortunately, this happens often enough that it feels like the developers should have spent some time dealing with these problems instead of installing a quick fix that will just leave players frustrated.