The Greenening may sound like a horror movie, but it is actually a cosy, wholesome, incremental nature regeneration game. Playing alongside a giant pink blob sprinkler system, players take control of a cloud to wash away thick ash on a distant planet that’s become too industrialised. As greenery restores, you’ll harvest more powers to help nature take back the planet, in what is an uplifting, incremental adventure.
Your mileage with The Greenening will be tied to two things. If you like cosy, nature games, you’ll enjoy this to some extent. The big marmite situation is that most of The Greenening’s gameplay involves slowly moving your cloud around a level to wash away ash to collect currency. You’ll use that currency to upgrade your cloud’s rain power and penetration, and then go again. Over time, you’ll gain access to butterflies that blow ash away with their wings, some wolves that will wrestle dysfunctional tech that spreads more ash to the ground, and you can turn the pink blob into a sprinkler system. In true incremental fashion, you’ll have multiple currencies to collect, and these come from washing clean bits of flora and fauna, alongside broken technologies. It all comes back to moving your cloud and watching the level regrow.
I’m more of an active gamer, and so games that play closer to an idle or pure clicker style get stale for me extremely quickly. If you enjoy the lighter, breezier side of incrementals, then The Greenening will be more for you than me. What was slightly frustrating for me was that the game hints at more gameplay ideas under the surface but doesn’t commit to them. Across the ten levels, many of them have webs of power cables and power generators to wash clean as a requirement to clear a level. Lakes are introduced to replenish your cloud’s water supply as when you run out of rain, your run is over. The last level requires you to find lakes and then blow up power generators using your water supply. Suddenly, all the things hinted at come together to make sense. The Greenening is engaging, and there’s an element of light strategy and planning involved, especially when enemy tech starts covering the level with ash again. Then… the game ends! I wanted so much more of that. I’d have preferred the game to lean much more into active decision making, but alas, it wasn’t to be.
Where you can play is in your tiny biome. Here you can buy bushes, flowers, grass, and trees, and arrange them in the biome however you’d like. It’s like a very basic terrarium arranger, and it generates one of your currencies for you. It’s a mild distraction in what is a game that is too mild for my personal tastes. 10% of the sales from The Greenening go to charity, though, so I’m not too upset with my purchase. I’d just like more to do next time.
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