Why Everyone Hates The Garten Of Banban

Overview

The video reviews the Garten of Banban series, which its creator describes as mascot horror’s most divisive game: depending on whom you ask, it is either a masterpiece or “still sucks.” The narrator, Tai—also known as Definitely Bored Oranges—plays the games in release order, skipping Chapter 5, to decide whether the series is entertainingly terrible or just terrible.

The Games

Chapter 1

Tai criticizes Chapter 1 for its bland, mismatched character designs, rough performance, and drone gimmick, which turns puzzles into chores. He jokes that the game makes a PC work like “a slave in the 1920s,” then gets stuck and soft-locked during a chase sequence. In his view, the generic mascots and confusing puzzles make it difficult to distinguish Banban from other mascot-horror titles.

Chapter 2

Chapter 2 initially seems to embrace the series’ reputation for absurdity. Tai laughs at Banolina, a Play-Doh-like schoolteacher who kills the player for minor infractions, and at bizarre moments such as being slimed by a snail to a metal-pipe sound effect.

He compares Banban with Poppy Playtime, noting that both use familiar genre conventions. However, Banban’s flaws are so obvious that they can be funny—at least at first.

Chapter 3

That amusement wears off in Chapter 3, which Tai calls boring and lazy. He says it repeats puzzles and attacks, drags out a boss fight, and frustrates him with a chase that requires waiting for a companion bird at arbitrary points.

“So Bad It’s Good”

The game’s shortcomings lead to the video’s main argument: “so bad it’s good” only works when the creator was genuinely trying to make something good.

Tai respects earnest creative failures, but sees Banban’s laziness and self-awareness as something different—like a project that has given up and expects the audience to laugh along. He also criticizes the Euphoric Brothers’ Roblox roleplay game for tactics such as limited-time skins and FOMO, while clarifying that he does not think the developers are bad people.

After looking into the brothers’ earlier games, Tai concludes that they experimented with many ideas before Banban became a hit. He suspects that, after those projects received mixed responses, they kept making games until one took off. In his view, Banban’s success made it a profitable franchise, but also encouraged the series to add more characters and sequels rather than improve the games or finish the story.

The “Deadlock Banban Scale”

To measure the experience, Tai introduces the “Deadlock Banban scale”: the more time the game wastes, the more he wants to play Deadlock instead.

Long animations, NPCs that take ages to catch up, invisible walls, and puzzles that feel nonsensical even within the story all push the imaginary graph upward. Chapter 8 briefly offers a promising color-matching mechanic, but soon returns to repetitive, frustrating encounters. In one sequence, the player must repeatedly bait a fire-breathing enemy into drinking from a tumor-like object.

Story and Series Criticism

The story fares no better in Tai’s assessment. The player is searching for their missing child, but the silent protagonist spends much of the series following side quests and fighting new characters, with little meaningful progress toward that central goal.

Characters who attack the player often seem to become allies in later games, while new villains and teased characters continue to pile up. Tai’s verdict is that Banban is not merely bad: it is repetitive, wastes the player’s time, and increasingly relies on sequels instead of resolving its plot.

He also criticizes mascot horror more broadly for repeatedly copying the underground-facility-and-puzzles formula rather than trying something new.

Closing

The video ends with a brief channel update about upcoming projects and a trip to PAX in Australia, followed by thanks to Patreon supporters and a deliberately silly sign-off.

Personalities Appearing

• Tai / Definitely Bored Oranges — The narrator.
• An unnamed companion — Reacts during the Chapter 8 gameplay.