Report: Wholesome Direct reveals key "wholesome" themes this year are plants, witches

rockpapershotgun.com:

This year's Wholesome Direct featured around a hundred games, and from that, just as bloggers at Paris Fashion Week are able to look at what Versace is slanging down the runway to predict key highstreet colour themes 12 months in advance, we can look at what his wholesome hot and what is wholesome not. Get your wholesome discourse takes prepared, because in 2022 and beyond it's all about plants and witches.

Just like pastels, plants are often a feature of wholesome games, but this year the trend is going all out, and it's giving ecology. While things like Strange Horticulture, or even something like Among Trees were early indicators of this, the combination of everything being on fire and everyone being inside for years has caused a latent interest in nature - and reconnecting with it - to bloom. Games that people started making like two years ago are coming out now, and they've all got plants in 'em.

Slow-burn real time plantventure The Garden Path, due later this year, made sure to check in, and we're seeing a resurging interest in Stardew-likes where growing is the day. But note how we're leaning towards gardening rather than farming, specifically, with Critter Crops, Garden In, or the theme-straddling Garden Witch Life (which looks gorge). Wholesome - Out And About is really doing what it says on the tin, while Snufkin: Melody Of Moominvalley is about finding harmony with nature again. Perhaps the purest expressions of the planty trend comse from Terra Nil (rebuilding a ravaged wasteland) and Lumbearjack (beating the shit out of human-made rubbish, wholesomely).

As for the witches? I have no logical explanation for that, but they're fucking everywhere. I'm super excited for Spirit Swap, as readers of my ramblings