Taking Root

> Forgot to water my plants irl and they died. Sad. > Found Taking Root, bought & installed for cozy vibes. > Placed three plants in perfect light. Watered. Water-gauge fills slowly. I water again. > Plants overwatered. > Forget about game for 2 days > Start again, cut leafs, water again, take offshoots of one plant. Happy that they grow! > Forget about game again (3 days..?) > Start again. Many dead leafs! No water! One plant dead. > Water my aloe vera. Managed to overwater again. Cut dead leafs. Info says "too many dead leafs". Cut more. With one leaf left it reads "too many dead leafs". I hesitate, then cut the last leaf off. "Too few leafs!" I hope and pray it regenerates and survives. > Start up next day again: Aloe dead. But at least the Monstera is fine. Perfect "brown thumb" simulator. 10/10 would kill virtual plants rather than irl plants again.

Taking Root is a relatively simple, cozy, plant care game. You get a small room you can decorate with various types of furniture, a bunch of plants that are common in houseplant circles, and you can propagate and care for them in a much simpler way than in real life. You basically can pick between active, which is fast but doesn't run between play sessions, or passive, which does. This means you can tailor the system to work the way you want, on your schedule, which is nice (i.e., you can go on vacation and not worry about them dying, unlike real plants). Overall, it's a nice little game to open up every once in a while and spend time with.

I'm really sad to put this.... but until further changes are hopefully made to the game. I just can't recommend it. If it was cheaper it would be a maybe, but at the price it's just not worth it. Here's the thing... if you are looking for a game like Viridi that you check maybe once or twice a day... sure you'll probably like this game. If you are looking for a game you can play while doing other things. This game is not it. Let's get the good out of the way first. - The visual design of the plants is very good! I also generally like the look of most furniture... not all of it by any means. But overall the game has a decent look. -The system for watering and pruning plants is pretty good! Prune plants to keep them healthy. Make sure they are getting the right level of sun based on placement. Water your plants but try to not overwater them or you will do damage. -Sound design is pretty good. -The UI looks nice and clean is is *generally* easy to read and understand. And that.... is all the good.... onto the bad -The game moves too damn slow. Like I said if you are looking for an idle game where you only check it once or twice a day tops. Something like Viridi then this game is for you. Problem is that there are two modes. Passive, which keeps things *super* slow and can keep the game playing while it's off. Then Active which speeds up time but pauses the game when it's not up. The issue is that in passive mode I can come bay 12 hours later and none of my plants need anything. Not water. No pruning. Nothing. It took literal real life days to be able to sell any of my plants for profit. Then okay... play in active right? The game will move faster right? Wrong. The game still moves PAINFULLY slow. Now it still moves quickly mind you. I had about an hour of play time in the game when I accidentally left it up for 5 hours in active mode and that was enough for my plants to die. The problem is that if you are wanting to *actively* play there's just not much to do. Had I actually realized I left the game up. I'd maybe be spending a few seconds ever hour or so to do something. You do have to actively check the game in Active! But it takes like 5 seconds to take care of your plants. It takes no time at all. So know that this is NOT a game that you can truly actively play. It's not like a "Oh I'll leave it up, do something for 30 minutes to an hour, then take a 15-30 minute break doing something in the game" - The game has you earn money to buy things by selling full grown plants. The problem is that the game has no real indicator when a plant IS full grown. I was alerted upon opening the game that my Aloe was grown, but that was for a tutorial on how to repot a plant. I got no notifications for any of my other plants once they were full grown. There's also no obvious indicators that the plant is grown. You would think the growth meter would tell you, but that meter is full when you buy the plant. I looked at my full grown Aloe and nothing on the menu looked any different when clicking on the plant, then any of my other not fully grown plants. So even plants that looked like *maybe* they were full grown I could not tell in any way if they were ready to sell. -Speaking of the tutorial. I accidentally closed the tutorial when doing it... which restarts the tutorial if you decide to start it up again. The tutorial does not register if you already did any buying tasks. So I ended up with 3 pots because I kept having to rebuy them for the tutorial I had to keep restarting because I kept accidentally clicking it. -The camera control is awful. Took me ages to figure out that to move the camera... it's not WASD... it's not arrows... it's not left click and drag. It's clicking on the scroll wheel. Nothing in the game tells you that. Another awful one is that if you go through a wall the wall disappears. Why is this a problem? I had plants on hanging shelves and if I zoomed in on the plant, and turned the camera to look all around it for leaves that needed pruned. Once I was trying to look at the backside of the plant... my camera would go through the wall and the entire wall would disappear. So the only way to check the back of your plants for dead leaves if they are on a hanging shelf... is to move the whole ass plant to a different spot and check it. Conclusion... I REALLY wanted to like this game. I like Viridi, but I always wished it was more than just a check once a day thing. But this game doesn't even need to be checked once a day because of how slowly it moves. The camera issues make the game a pain to play. The fact that the menu doesn't have a button for a controls so you can see what things do sucks. The game has a lot of potential. It's a cute game. I want to love it. But it's just not worth the price. Not even what I got it on sale for. I got it for $5 and I'm still debating on trying to see if steam will give me a refund since I accidentally left the game open. The caring of the plants is nice. I like the addition of pruning. I like that the game seems to be able to tell if you have a plant close to a window or not and that not just the distance but the height from the window seems to make a difference. It's just so inactive of a game and the camera is so damn frustrating and selling plants is so unclear. That I just can't. Hopefully there will be some updates to the game soon. But as it stands this is a game I just can't recommend. It needs tweaked more. I'd definitely say it's worth keeping an eye on, but not worth the full price and not worth getting right now. [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/43095726-Just-A-Chick-Reviews/] Check out my Curator Page[/url]