the audiovisual presentation feels really authentic, even down to the screen transitions and jingles. the music is lovely and the visuals are very charming. overall it’s a cool package, I like how there are multiple games in one, but 2 is a weird number. I wonder if you aspired to have more games, but I guess you didn’t have time for any more.
Hanging Gardens — fun concept, a single-screen puzzle-platformer with a mechanically interesting implementation of growing plants. however, I found the gameplay to be lacking, mainly due to how the enemies work. their timing seems entirely random and unpredictable, leading to some unfair deaths. crickets can suddenly jump while you’re jumping above them, and dogs change direction without warning. sometimes the crickets even double-jump, is that intended?? I got to level 7. in the end I didn’t enjoy this much, as the wonky jump physics, unforgiving hitboxes, and annoying enemies brought the experience down. I mean, there’s a charm to wonky mechanics, and I enjoy trying to master them… but in this case it didn’t quite hit the mark for me.
Tower of Babel — neat word-puzzler that started out very easy, and I cleared a lot of levels without realizing that words had to be real words. the challenge picked up after a handful of levels, and I had fun racking my brain on the later levels. I got completely stuck on some though, and I’d appreciate a quick way to exit a level to try a different one, but it’s a minor complaint. this was a really clever game!
bug report: in menus, the controller joystick seems to input a direction every frame when held, making it quite unusable. d-pad and keyboard works fine so no big deal.
(note: I copypasted this comment between your submission pages for GWJ and 8BJ)