Munshi Meadows

Open up your garden and your friends can drop by, over Steam or your local network, to have a look around. While they're there you can race each other, step into the ring together, take on puzzle trials side by side, or pair up two Munshis and see what hatches. Fancy a race with strangers? Quick Race finds other keepers on Steam and puts you on the same course.




Every Munshi starts out as an egg. Once it hatches it's yours to look after. Feed it, pet it, play with it, and train it on the toys in your garden: a treadmill, a hurdle run, a swimming lane, a puzzle table, a sky trampoline and a high striker, each one a little game you play together. Potions in town give a boost too, but they don't come cheap. Each Munshi has a personality of its own, shy or grumpy or greedy or one of eight others, and you'll see it in how it spends its day, right up until bedtime. Over time it grows into something new, and what it becomes depends on how you raised it. There are 34 forms to find, plus a secret one, and most of them have a good, a neutral and a dark side, so it's rare for two Munshis to turn out the same.




Races test five skills: running, swimming, climbing, flying and wits. Every course wants a different mix, so a Munshi that flies through the water might get stuck halfway up a cliff. You start with easy runs through the countryside, and it gets stranger from there. Glowing caves, the inside of a live volcano, a sunken kingdom where you swim right through a whale, a dinosaur stampede, islands in the clouds, a frozen mountain range, the bottom of the pit, alien planets, a neon city in the rain, a candy carnival floating in space, chunks of land drifting over the clouds with a dragon wrapped around them, and a castle too tall for its mountain. That's 70 courses over 14 cups, and the very last one is a dream your Munshi has about every place it's ever raced.




It isn't all racing. Every world has its own fighting championship and puzzle trials, and each one is best of three against the toughest rival in the field, so it's always your Munshi you're cheering on. Some of the fights are cage matches where anything goes, ladders and top-rope dives included. Thistle & Turnbuckle in town sells a weapon for the ring and an item for the track, 27 in all, and more come into stock as your Munshis win. Once your Munshi is ready, give the Gauntlet a go. It starts your Munshi from scratch and throws all 70 courses at it in a random order. You get three hearts, and after each race you pick one of three random boons to help with the next. See how far you can get.




A Munshi lives for eight hours in your garden. When its time is up it comes back as a pup, keeping everything it learned plus a little extra. At the end of its third life you get to choose: keep it just as it is, or let it come back one last time in its final form, which depends on the heart it showed in every life before. Breed two Munshis and the pup gets the better talent of its parents in every skill, with a mix of their looks and personalities, so before long you've got a family line that's really yours.




There are over 230 pieces to play with. Dig ponds and lakes, plant fruit trees, put out swings and slides and a Ferris wheel, take ten Munshis out on the party boat or sit them all down for movie night. You don't have to lead them to any of it. They'll find it all on their own. You can keep five gardens, with room for ten Munshis in each. Win every course in a cup on Expert and that world unlocks as a garden theme, like a mushroom grotto, a garden among the stars or a sunken temple. There are 17 themes in all.



There are 48 things to wear, from straw hats and top hats to star-shaped shades and a dragon scarf. Button & Bow in town sells about half of them, and your Munshis win the rest. They keep them on when they race, too. Beat every race, fight and puzzle and you can build a Paint Hut, where any Munshi can be any colour you like.

• Garden visits, races, fights, puzzles and breeding with friends, over Steam or your local network
  
• 34 forms plus a secret one, 11 personalities, and talent that passes down through breeding
  
• Six training toys, each one its own little game
  
• 70 race courses in 14 cups, with a fighting championship and puzzle trials for every world
  
• The Gauntlet: every course, shuffled, with three hearts and random boons
  
• 27 weapons and race items, over 230 garden pieces, 17 garden themes and 48 things to wear
  
• Play in English, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, German, French or Russian