In Urban Jungle, use luscious plants to turn your ordinary home into a green haven. Find the best place for each plant in your small apartment and enjoy gardening without worries. And don’t forget to pet your cat!
Developed by: Kylyk Games
Played on: Steam
Length: 3-6 hours
A review key was provided by Kylyk Games.
At first glance, Urban Jungle seems like another Unpacking clone with plants, but this cozy puzzle-decorating game has a lot more hidden under its leafy exterior. In the game, you transform ordinary buildings into green havens by decorating them with various plants and flowers. Interwoven into each level is a simple but relatable narrative about a woefully overworked young woman with a lifelong dream to become a florist.
Most of the game follows the same successful formula of its predecessors, from the soothing lo-fi beats to relaxing decorating, but Urban Jungle innovates further on the genre with the addition of light puzzle gameplay. Decorating isn’t just about the aesthetics, it’s about meeting your plants’ needs; like access to sunlight, water, and being placed next to the plants they want to date. Okay, so the game isn’t exactly a plant dating simulator, but sometimes it feels pretty close to one.
While the puzzles themselves aren’t difficult, there is a minor amount of math involved. Each plant has a numerical score, and you must hit a minimum score to unlock more plants and eventually pass the level. You also have to complete a handful of side quests, although they’re mostly there to contribute to the relaxing vibes, from unpacking boxes to finding your lost childhood toy.
What surprised me the most about Urban Jungle was its size, both in terms of levels and length of the overall game. There are a total of eleven levels, which range from small one-storey spaces to massive two-storey houses. If you’re playing the game strictly to beat all the levels, one playthrough is around three hours long. But if you’re a serial cozy gamer like I am, there’s near endless amounts of gameplay to be discovered. Even though the game doesn’t directly incentivise you to clean each room beyond the scope of its quests, but I still found myself spending hours putting things neatly in place for my personal satisfaction.
Once you complete each level, you also unlock Creative Mode where you can decorate each level with the items and plants you’ve unlocked from previous levels. This time, without any of the restrictions. Collecting all the plant variants is surprisingly challenging, even for someone who spent six hours on the base game, so completionists will likely get even more hours out of this meditative experience.
Our biggest stumbling block with Urban Jungle came in the form of its controls. As the developer’s first PC release, some control mapping definitely felt like it was designed with mobile in mind instead of keyboard and mouse. The mouseover on objects in-game also wasn’t as responsive as I hoped it would be, and I spent a little too much time wiggling my mouse over objects and waiting for it to register in-game. Still, these issues didn’t get in the way of my overall enjoyment of the game.
Verdict: Your Next Cozy Escape
At first glance, Urban Jungle seems like another Unpacking clone with plants, but this cozy simulation game has a lot more hidden under its leafy exterior. With eleven aesthetically pleasing levels to decorate, and a unique approach to the puzzle-decorating mechanic, Urban Jungle manages to put a fun twist on an already successful formula, adding hours of meditative gameplay for cozy gamers to enjoy.
Wishlist Urban Jungle on Steam, and top up your Steam Wallet on Codashop to earn bonus rewards.
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