Sometimes you read discussions on blogs whether a blogger is a journalist or not. As most questions in life the answer is neither black nor white, but some shade of grey. The most recognition my blog ever got in this area was a press pass for a Blizzcon, including the opportunity to interview a World of Warcraft developer. But in general the big game companies do not consider me as "press", as they have access to bigger publications. Small game companies on the other hand, who can't get their games written about on bigger websites or print magazines, are sending me press releases all the time. And in 99% of cases I simply ignore those, because this isn't the kind of site that publishes press releases.

But yesterday I received a press release for Shikihime Garden: "For your information, Shikihime Garden is an original hybrid browser-based game of gardening and deck-building embedded with RPG elements where players must foster lovely Shikihime (female characters with magic abilities), take care of beautiful gardens and collect a variety of cards through numerous battles. The game combines turn-based card combat and simulation gameplay with exploration and quests." Deck-building and *gardening*??? What is that? Farmville with turn-based card combat? The game is browser-based, Free2Play, and will be released on March 11. You can sign up for Shikihime Garden here.

As I said, I wouldn't normally promote Free2Play browser games. But this one definitively wins the prize for the weirdest game description I have come across this year. So I will probably try it out just for the fun of it. Turn-based combat with cards might actually be good, if I'm lucky. Otherwise I can at least enjoy the weird cultural differences of a Japanese RPG.