Idle Plant Game

Normal review

This is hard one, i am actually torn apart between positive and negative review. You see, "Idle Plant" is unique game with it's own visual style, abnormal music and core gameplay loop unlike any other idler. I was impressed with how different it does basic things even compared to genre giants - Idle Wizard and Rule The Gods. But several huge issues dragging it down the drain and i hope developer takes notice and chages it soon, since those aren't requiring big changes to code.

The bad

Interface is horrible, in every possible way. Let's start from fact that there is no "exit" button and you have to close game by alt+f4, also no tutorial or tips and no pop-up mechanic to hover mouse cursor over some text to see details. Want to know what is "Rot Root"? Bad luck for you! What rabbits do? Go take a guess! What is main goal? Not explained. There are some buttons in main menu showing pro tips, but those are mostly for players who already reached deep mid-game stage and know how everything works. So you are forced to visit discord and ask questions there (which is annoying, since it requires to register extra account, plug in email and phone number).

Then we have limited music, it's basically one track for each of four seasons, which sounds a bit differently thanks to some sound effects applied. It's lenght is short and the thing is not even looped, so each time it ends you have to manually start over. There is music slider but it won't allow changing tracks, strat listening somewhere from middle or create play list.

And then there are seasons... Each representing change to resource gain and lasts for 150 real-time minutes. And winter is a hot mess: it will cut down all resources production by -25%, which means you will get into negative numbers very fast and forced to close game to not ruin a run. This is super annoying, instead of playing today in morning while i have time, logged in, found out winter starts in 30 minutes, played harshly as much as possible, then it hit resources so bad they went into negatives immediately. You see, when water goes into minus, plant roots start wither, roots which you previously purchased, less roots means less production of water and also means less sugar which you use to purchase leaves and roots.

The good

There are five playstyles with different degree of active/idle parts, each representing different plant. As you play one of them, eventually there is permanent upgrade that improves every other plant in specific way. So you kind-a want to try all, choose the one you like and pursuit bigger goals. One might say there is five games in one. Plants have unique grow conditions, upgrades, predators and bottlenecks, so it is quite interesting to dig in and figure out how it works, and how to beat the puzzle. You can't come up with good strategy to beat Succulent and apply it to Fern or Grass, instead, it feels like creating 5 characters assembled into a party to beat big boss in the end. From the look of it overall lenght is not that big compared to other idlers (was able to complete 2 plants in 7 hours), but at the same time less grind and repetition is a good thing.

Verdict

I kind-a recommend game to anyone who likes idlers and clickers, especially if you got borred with same stuff copy-pasted by devs over and over. But it needs some quick changes, more clear goals and atleast basic tutorial explaining main mechanics.

Sometimes I wish that steam had a neutral voting option, but ultimately I think this games is good albeit confusing.

The game doesn't teach you much immediately, leaving you to figure out its systems alone. This became frustrating for me, especially since the first plant is moss, the plant that has zero capability for action and is purely idle. It took me over a day to find that switching plants would give different stats and such and that was through browsing the community tab, where I played fern.

I enjoy the game now, because it feels like I'm actually playing a something now instead of watching numbers barely creep up, and while I'm not super far into it I can see myself running through the whole experience.

Tldr: If you want to play the game, read through the community tab some so you don't get stuck.

No tutorial, no explanation. Either slow as hell or overly complicated with nothing to tell you what to do in what order. Don't waste your time.