Do you like idle clicker genre? I do, that is why when Sprout: Idle Garden was announced, I noticed it right away.
It is an idle clicker game which is set neatly in a garden created by beautiful isometric graphics, but enough introduction, let's get straight to the point and see what it has to offer!
Play however you want
In my opinion, Sprout: Idle Garden is very unique because it has one of the most versatile gameplay out there. In this game, you could decide to play it however you like: become a blooming tycoon, grow a community garden … or just messing around. How you want to play this game is up to you. For example, I have spent 2 nights just to decide on what I should do next. For the moment my garden setup is linear and long, but my future plan is to have a house with a purple back garden. I have tried many idle clicker games before and I found out that this is a rare one that's worth more than one or two days of your play time. I feel that this game is a combination of Pocket City and idle clicker genre, together with a little bit of Valleys Between sprinkled on top.
Let's make money
The final goal of the game is to gather as much cash as possible, and so much of the main mechanics revolve around that concept. You could keep track of your current cash amount and your idle earnings with the tab on the upper right corner. Level up, get the best flower and earn the most money to win this game. You can increase your level when a new flower blooms, and currently, the max level is 30. When you reach a new level, there will a new flower available to you - and there will be also a variety of planters, tiles, plants, miscellaneous and houses that come with the new level. All of that goodness is worth looking into, as they help you understand the mechanic of the game better.
The ground tiles
All the ground tiles in the game have different usages. Like we use the path for traveling around but then you put dirt or grass on to hold plants or planters. As its name suggests, the planter seems like an appropriate place to plan the flowers. Each planter will cost a little bit more than the previous one and but generally they all work the same. They are just different in an aesthetic way. Planters are utmost important because they contain the golden goose: those beautiful flowers.
The houses come together with gardeners - those in charge of collecting flowers so you don't have to do it by yourself. However, I find this part a little weird because logically bigger houses should come with more gardener than small houses but in Sprout: Idle Garden, both only host one gardener.
The plants
The plants in your garden will increase the idle value of all the flowers. All the different plant varieties all give the same effect. There will be also some miscellaneous items for the garden: a coffee station to boost your gardener, a phonograph to add music, fountains and lamps help improve the mood.
Remember that when you build anything, it will cost money - and I mean anything. But when you remove it - you could get the money back. The whole thing is an amazingly balanced system.
The golden goose flowers
You could upgrade the flowers up to level 50 with a simple idle clicker mechanic in which you could choose to purchase 1,5, or even 10 levels with each click. All the flowers have very different looks so it is quite easy to identify them. Click on the flower to earn your precious money or let the gardener do that task that is up to you. By the way, the flowers also earn a base amount of money so keeping them leveled up is a good strategy. Also, pay attention to the delicate balance between the number of flowers and gardeners. This is a major strategic factor that you have to consider throughout the game.
In total, there are 43 goals, and most of these goals are about leveling up and buying certain items. Currently you can only achieve one goal at a time, but that's a mechanic I would like to change in this game. I would love that they do something like double goals, pick this one or the other.
In term of controls, all of your inputs in this game feel very natural and intuitive. You will not be getting tired of holding, touching, moving, and clicking your way through your garden anytime soon.
How they handle ads in Sprout: Idle Garden
So, it is time to address the elephant in the room: Like in any other free-2-play game, there will be ads. We have seen tons of free games do poorly in this aspect, like those games which throw 30-second ads at you whenever they feel like to. But Sprout: Idle Garden is not one of those games. Here, there is a very reasonable amount of advertisements that will let you choose when to watch the ads. That's all!
Additionally, watching ads can earn you the following:
- Triple the idle amount
- Flower Party: Once every 5 minutes
- Wheel of Flowers: Once every 5 minutes
- Insta-Grow: Once every 30 minutes
Sprout: Idle Garden is more of a casual and fun game rather than one that demands a huge amount of time and dedication. Yes, sometimes you want to obtain that hard flower… sometimes you want to do a complete redesign of your garden, maybe just leave the phone there for the whole day to spend valuable time with your family. But when you got back to the game you will receive a bunch of cash which you can triple just by watching an ad. One more feature which makes the game even more amazing is that it has an active community on Discord with more than 600 members. This in-game community helps to improve the gaming experiences lots since they are very helpful and reactive.