All in the garden: zoomers choose games about plants
Gardening video games are a great way to celebrate spring without leaving home. Even if it's raining, snowing and freezing outside, you can plunge into the green virtual world waiting for the real nature to really wake up. Izvestia has explored interesting options for those who play on PCs, consoles, and mobile devices.
Strange Horticulture
Genre: Story puzzle
What to play on: PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, macOS
The indie game, released in early 2022, allows you to take over the management of a mysterious plant store. The plot involves cataloging plants, selecting the right products for visitors, and encountering occult phenomena more than once during work. The game has multiple endings.
Stardew Valley
Genre: Farm/life simulator
What to play on: PC, macOS, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, iOS, Android
One of the best farming simulations of all time, Stardew Valley begins with inheriting a family farm. You can choose from several types of plots with different natural conditions, such as a river farm, a forest farm, or a farm on the coast.
The game has a lot to do: exploring mines, romantic relationships with local residents and, of course, advanced gardening with the cultivation of many crops. For those who are not familiar with the game, there are already many gamer guides, for example, on creating efficient greenhouses or growing high—yield fruits and plants to maximize the profitability of the farm.
Farming Simulator
Genre: Farm simulator
What to play on: PC, iOS, Android, Mac OS, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo Switch
Farming Simulator is one of the most realistic farming activity sims. This game is perfect for fans of business management simulations and detailed models of agricultural machinery. The career mode offers different levels of difficulty: from "New Farmer", where the player already has land, machinery and a stable economy, to "From scratch", where they have to deal with bank debts and a weak economy.
Prune
Genre: puzzle
What to play on: PC, iOS, Android
The developers describe Prune as a "love message to trees," and the game's art style is inspired by Japanese ink painting. The main goal of the game is to guide a sapling towards sunlight by cutting off excess branches and avoiding toxic red balls. Victory will be achieved when enough flowers bloom on the tree.
The Sims 4
Genre: Life simulator
What to play on: PC, macOS, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
It's safe to say that if it's in life, then it's in The Sims. One of the most extensive simulators of everyday life offers excellent gardening mechanics even in the basic version without add-ons. Perhaps one of the most successful additions to botany is the "Seasons". In addition to dynamically changing the weather, it adds a horticultural career to the game with development paths to a botanist or a florist. And if you are interested in the aspect of landscape design, you can pay attention to the addition "Cottage life", which will help to recreate a cozy rustic atmosphere or an ideal place for romantic dates in the garden.
Viridi
Genre: Home gardening simulator
What to play on: PC, macOS, Android, iOS
This is a relaxing succulent growing game. At the start, you need to choose a pot and plants, and then watch them grow slowly, take care of them and monitor the watering level. A small snail will accompany this mediation process. The atmospheric soundtrack adds a special mood to the game.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Genre: Life simulator
What to play on: Nintendo Switch
Charming Animal Crossing game: New Horizons gained incredible popularity at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and still remains a great way to have a good time. It has become a real cultural phenomenon, giving rise to many memes and heated discussions. Gardening opportunities are not as wide here as in The Sims or Stardew Valley, but players can still find interesting tasks to their liking. For example, breeding rare flowers — in order to independently develop a scheme for growing hybrid flowers and rare golden flowers, you will have to spend a lot of game hours.
Terrarium: Garden Idle
Genre: Home gardening simulator
What to play on: macOS, Android
This game is suitable for those who don't have much time, but they want to take care of virtual plants. In Terrarium: Garden Idle, the player passively grows a collection of indoor plants, which eventually begin to produce the necessary amount of oxygen. As you progress, new plants are discovered, such as yucca, moonstone, and venus flycatcher.
Reap
Genre: Survival simulator
What to play on: PC
Screenshot from the game Reap
Reap is an indie survival game in which you need to set up a small vegetable garden. At the start, the player is stranded without any supplies. The world around us seems empty, but there is an axe and a shovel. These tools will help you build a new life: you can cut down trees with an axe to get wood, and use a shovel for gardening. You can only grow turnips, they are incredibly important for survival. You will have to find tubers in the wild and either eat it raw or plant it in the hope of a harvest.
Botanist
Genre: Home gardening simulator
What to play on: PC
The plot of this indie game is vital: the hero is fired from his job. But he understands that he has always loved plants, which means he has a chance to start his own botanical business. Seeds need to be ordered online — each of them is procedurally generated based on the entered query. Orders must be reviewed and checked to see if the grown flowers meet the requirements of the buyers. If there is a match, the flower is photographed and sent to the customer — this way you can earn reputation and money. Gradually, the business will grow — and all this literally from the comfort of your own virtual living room.
Topsoil
Genre: puzzle
What to play on: PC, macOS, Android
Topsoil is a stylish gardening puzzle game. The player is given a piece of land and a set of flowers or seeds to plant. The flowers are planted in a fully grown state, and the seeds need several turns to bloom. The top of the screen shows which plant will appear next and when the next harvest turn will come.
By collecting groups of identical colors on one piece of land, the player changes the color of this zone. Areas of the same color connect to each other, creating more space for planting flowers of the same type. The more flowers you can collect, the higher the score.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
