Anyone older than 25 likely has fond — or madly frustrating — memories of playing FarmVille, the popular browser game that lets users grow virtual crops and herd pixelated animals. Agriculture aficionados can rejoice: Generation Alpha’s FarmVille has arrived.
Grow a Garden, a simplistic farming simulation that involves planting seeds and collecting exotic pets, has exploded as one of the most highly played titles of the year. Technically an “experience” within the game-creation platform Roblox, it smashed its own record for concurrent users by reeling in 16.4 million active players on Saturday.
It is a genuinely shocking feat. That number is more than Fortnite’s peak and greater than the concurrent player records of the top five Steam games combined.
Grow a Garden’s allure might baffle anyone who has never toyed with slow-paced world-builders like Animal Crossing or Tomodachi Life. Players nurture a potpourri of plants and pets, which they can buy and sell in exchange for the in-game currency Sheckles, which can also be bought with Roblox’s in-platform currency Robux (which can itself be purchased with real dollars).
Plots begin barren before users transform them into fantastical safaris of shimmering frogs and prancing monkeys that each have their own special abilities. Suddenly, a player’s dismal square brims with vibrant vegetation and beanstalks shooting into the sky.
Numerous qualities elevate the game from a standard farm sim. It is the first major Roblox game to integrate offline growth, which encourages players to return to see changes. There are multiple time-sensitive components, including shops that restock with new items every five minutes and weekly drops (like the fruit-pollinating “Bizzy Bees”) with exclusive items that feel like can’t-miss moments. Every little element has been shaped to keep people hooked, including blind-box pet eggs and the ability to steal things from other users’ farms.
These digital ranchers are so feverish that some have resorted to third-party sites to acquire the most legendary commodities. People have spent over $100 on eBay listings for the cosmic-looking Candy Blossom Tree and for Titanic Dragonflies.
At its peak, Grow a Garden had more than triple the population of New Zealand, the home of Janzen Madsen, who runs Splitting Point Studios, which scouts and acquires rising games on the platform. When Madsen, 28, picked up Grow a Garden from the Roblox creator BMWLux in April, it had about 2,000 concurrent users.
“I was immediately like, ‘Wow, this is pretty cool,’” said Madsen, who is also known as Jandel. “Farming is pretty innate to humans. If you think about it, the past thousands and thousands of years, it’s what everyone’s done.”
Madsen’s team of about 20 people scaled the game, fixing bugs and adding key elements like daily quests. And it is still tinkering. Madsen teased an update involving dogs that would recover fossils that could be traded in for sand-themed fruits, and eventually a feature that allows people to trade items. He also wants to have celebrities host live events with him.
Madsen has scaled many Roblox games, but nothing like this. He has seen people playing the game in real life, and all of his friends’ children are loving it. “To be platform-defining, or even industry-defining is crazy,” he said.
As news about the game’s record-obliterating player count spread across the internet, some were dubious about its legitimacy. But after comparisons with other games on Roblox, people have largely concluded that bots have not heavily contributed to Grow a Garden’s success.
Some have theorized that the game is so popular because its bare-bones, subtly addictive gameplay appeals to a new, younger audience that is just starting to dominate Roblox. A popular video clip showed what looked like a classroom full of children sitting at computers excitedly awaiting a Grow a Garden update. Per Madsen’s data, about 35 percent of its sizable player base is under 13.
KreekCraft, a popular Roblox YouTuber, pointed to Grow a Garden’s popularity on TikTok and Shorts — full of juvenile, goofy clips of the game — as evidence of its younger users.
“Normally, whenever a Roblox game gets really popular, there’s an equal reaction on the YouTube side of things,” said KreekCraft, whose real name is Forrest. Instead, there is barely any long-form content proportional to the game’s success. Previous Roblox hits like Dress to Impress were buoyed by influencers like Kai Cenat, but this one is all short-form videos.
“It’s a lot of younger kids coming in,” KreekCraft said. “It’s a very simple, straightforward, easy-to-understand game.”
Still, the game is clearly beloved by people of all ages. Nobody has any clue how big it will become and how long it can continue this upward growth.
“It’s definitely a Roblox game that came out of nowhere,” KreekCraft said in disbelief. “It popped on the radar a few weeks ago and now it’s broken every single Roblox record by miles. And it’s just like, ‘How did this happen? What is the ceiling here?’ It blows my mind.”
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