Urban Jungle is a cosy and slow-paced mixture of two relaxing genres of games: organising things and placing objects to get the right results. It is part satisfying organisation game, part placement puzzler – and both elements allow the player to be as creative, messy, or organised as you want to be. This open-ended nature is largely a blessing, as it takes the focus away from scoring big and puts the focus on making things feel your own instead.
The story of Urban Jungle takes place over several decades and involves a young lady burning out from corporate hell and deciding to risk it all and open her own plant business instead. This is much to her mother’s anguish as she values traditional corporate hard work, and your sibling rivalry with your brother doesn’t help either. Whilst the story is kept to short dialogue moments at half way segments in each level, it charts your life as you move home and business premises over the decades. There’s some excellent environmental storytelling too as objects you had a child come with you between levels, or gifts from your bestie at college stay too. There is more than a bit of borrowing from Unpacking’s storytelling design but it works just as well here.
The main goal of each level is to generate points by placing plants in their most optimal spot in each level. Plants have different requirements. Some like the sun; others prefer shade. Some need humidity and need to be placed next to water, whereas others prefer a dry climate. For bonus points, plants can be placed next to their preferred plant friends too. Each move presents a selection of plants (randomly selected from a pool allowed in that level) for you to choose two to take into the level. Picking them up and moving them around will show the spheres of influence that the sun and water have, and each plant’s point total changes as you decide where to place each plant. Score enough points, you’ll unlock the next turn.
As long as you pay attention, it’s quite difficult to get stuck and fail in Urban Jungle. Getting some of each plant’s requirements will get you most of the way towards completion. Each level can be rotated around, and lamps, watering cans and other objects can be moved around to suit your vibe. This means the player’s creativity is central to what the end result will look and feel like. It is rare to have such an open-ended design to puzzle solving and it meant I could focus less on what scores big and more on what felt right. It took me my first playthrough to really let go of that big-score notion, though, so prepare to learn to let go.
All common plants are free, but uncommon, rare and legendary plants cost money. You can earn money by completing various tasks in each level, and here’s where the Unpacking-style gameplay comes in. Tasks involve unpacking your boxes, putting away kitchenware or books, packing flower orders for your customers, or placing plants on a windowsill or desk. Sometimes, it is just to pet the cat. Each task earns coins to buy better plants, and these come with a higher base score, meaning you can be even more creative and less worried about the optimal placement. The only niggle I had with Urban Jungle came from placing down these objects. Like plants, you can put your personal objects almost anywhere, and that meant sometimes they’d glitch out and fall through the floor or out the building. That’s fine as long as a task isn’t associated with that object. This happened to me four times where I lost objects tied to completing tasks for money, and it prevented me from 100% completion of the game, forcing me to restart a level if I wanted perfection. Tasks also appear in a certain order and if you accidently complete a task, like tidying up trash or clearing away 10 boxes, for example, before the task comes on screen, Urban Jungle doesn’t seem to count it. Again, this locks you out of perfectly clearing a level, so just be careful to only complete what is given to you at the time.
Completing a level opens up creative mode, allowing you to select that location again and use any bought and used plants from across the game to decorate the level to your heart’s content. The simple controls and freedom of placement shine here, as it does in the main game. You’ll be green-fingered before you know it. There’s no busy work in Urban Jungle, only aesthetically pleasing greenery.
With a lovely story draping over a very open-ended and creative puzzle game, Urban Jungle is a great choice for relaxed puzzling. Its soft visuals, music score, and low difficulty challenge all help sell a message of believing in yourself. You’ll need to let your creative juices flow to get the most out of it. I enjoyed the process of just vibing with my plants, with Urban Jungle providing a warm and wholesome approach to following your dream.
Review copy provided by the publisher. Urban Jungle is out now on Steam.
Higher Plain Games is part of the Higher Plain Network. If you like what I do, please consider supporting me via Patreon for as little as $1/£1 a month. There are additional perks for supporting me, such as behind-the-scenes content and downloads. You can also share the website or use the affiliate buy now links on reviews. Buying credit from CD Keys using my affiliate link means I get a couple of pence per sale. All your support will enable me to produce better content, more often. Thank you.
