Planted! Review – Aggressive Gardening

We love gardening in real life because it’s such a peaceful and relaxing activity. It easily puts us in a state of calm, with visible and practical results further down the line. We also love games that simulate the whole experience, especially since they allow us to do all sorts of wondrous things in our digital gardens. But what if gardening is anything but peaceful?

Planted! turns growing vegetables into a competitive sport where it’s perfectly okay to steal your neighbour’s crops or throw enormous carrots at their head. We’d never dare do that in real life. Okay, we did it once. Fine, twice, but it was all our neighbours’ fault! Regardless, we never took things to the next level quite like the developers of Planted! have. Here, we have an unusual combination of farming, arcade sports, and party-game chaos, especially when we consider that the game pits up to four players against one another. To our absolute joy, there’s also a dedicated single-player campaign, since we often prefer working alone. Let’s see whether this unusual combination has what it takes to grow on us!

Sow, Grow, and Throw!

The basic idea behind Planted! is relatively simple. It boils down to preparing a patch of land with a shovel, planting some seeds, and watering our crops until they’re ready to harvest. Fertiliser helps vegetables grow larger, which, in turn, increases their value. Once they’re ready, we pull them out of the ground and throw them into a designated collection point to earn money. The player or team with the highest score wins. See? Simple!

Growing vegetables, however, is only half the job. We also need to keep an eye on our opponents, who can steal our carefully cultivated produce and claim the rewards for themselves. Even our gardening equipment isn’t safe from theft. Meanwhile, throwing vegetables from greater distances and delivering them in quick succession can earn us additional points.

There are 12 power-ups to help us along the way, including sprinklers that water plants automatically, Spud Turrets that attack opponents, and Weed Bombs that disrupt their activities. These power-ups can be game-changing and are among the most entertaining elements of Planted!, introducing some interesting tactical possibilities. We seized every opportunity to use them to our advantage, whether that meant protecting our precious crops or making life miserable for our opponents.

An Ordinary Vegetable Garden?

The eight multiplayer arenas introduce environmental hazards and different scoring arrangements. The AGF Stadium, for example, turns gardening into something resembling football, with teams throwing vegetables into their opponents’ goal. The Construction Site challenges us to compete across five floors of an unfinished skyscraper while dealing with moving platforms, cement mixers, and an enormous wrecking ball. We also have to mention the Stormy Isles arena, where changing water levels periodically interrupt the routes between islands. We had a ton of fun discovering these arenas, learning how they work, and figuring out how to use their unpredictable designs to our advantage.

For solo gardeners, the campaign follows Gus, whose enormous carrot has been stolen. His search leads him into the wonderfully ridiculous world of competitive gardening. Alongside regular competitions, the campaign introduces platforming challenges, minigames, and boss encounters. As much as we enjoyed the campaign, Planted! truly shines in multiplayer, and it’d be a shame not to experience those arenas with your frenemies.

Plant Away!

Our score: 8/10

Game at a Glance

• Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S (PC and Nintendo Switch planned)
• Developer: Cloth Cat Games
• Publisher: Curveball Games
• Genre: Party Game, Arcade, Competitive Gardening
• Release: October 29, 2026
• Mode: Single-player, Local and Online Multiplayer (1–4 players)