You like cute stuff and crave for a micromanaging Tamagotchi experience? This is for you!
Plantera immerses the player in a jolly pixelated world where growing crops/plants and collecting its fruits goes so fast that it could solve our real world’s famine problems. By the time my girlfriend opened the fridge to make us both dinner and went back to the stove I went from a single crop on a barren piece of land to a lush garden overflowing with life and weird blue creatures.
The game is simple; it’s a “clicker”. I know it might sound lame and boring to port a game that is typically developed for tablets to the Nintendo Switch but it works and it helps to pass some time bit by bit. The concept is simple: You grow stuff and by collecting its products once it grew successfully you earn currency to plant even more. But with great expansion comes big spending! You’ll quickly run out of space and will have to buy the neighboring grounds to expand your garden. A lush garden will attract insects like butterflies which you can click on (or touch using the touchscreen) to collect more coins. Not every animal you attract will be friendly to your enterprise however. Buy chicks to collect eggs and you’ll have to scare off foxes fancying an “ommelette du jardin”. If you buy sheep to collect wool you’ll notice an increase in wolves trying to diminish your livestock. You can touch these animals to scare them off but eventually, you’ll be able to buy guard dogs which will go from right to left to bark at foes. The bigger your garden the longer it will take for them to patrol from left to right. So you’ll eventually have to buy more dogs etc. The system is well balanced and you’ll quickly find yourself caring more and more about your garden.
With the passing of time you will see your revenue increasing because the little blue helpers will collect everything for you; the bigger your garden the more will come to help you. You can let them collect everything on their own or you can click your products to increase your revenue speed and diminish the blue guys’ labor.
Where do they even come from? Are these spare dudes from the Eiffel song back in the early 2000’s? Those millennials!
All in all, this isn’t a game you’ll play for hours on end but I felt myself drawn to it a couple times a week to see how my garden was doing. After a while, you get emotionally attached to your own lil’ garden of life. And if you’re lucky you’ll spot the random javelin knight on time and click him enough times to get those needed coins!
