Thank you VaragtP for sending us the review code!

Plantera 2: Golden Acorn is a cute agriculture-based idle game where you have to create a farm to make money using the food it bears. With many ways to make it beautiful and personalized to your taste, this game is a great way to unwind and relax. This is a sequel as well, and it has improved a lot from the first game. There are a lot more things for you to do, as well as more unique ways to develop a good cashflow. The art is a lot cuter and contains smoother animations, as well as a really good soundtrack compared to the previous one.

You start off with an empty island except for a small oak tree in the center. You have very limited capabilities, but are able to catch butterflies for money to plant your first crop: the leek. When making money, you also gain XP to level up to unlock new plants, animals, or some types of structures to use to your advantage. There are several categories of crops, which consist of the in-ground ones (like carrots, leek, radish), bushes (e.g berries, smaller fruit), and trees (fruit). Some non-plant features are also used such as farm animals to use to sell whatever they may produce, dogs to scare off foes, decorative plants, or industrial buildings to make jam or flour.

I briefly mentioned previously that when you start, there’s an oak tree in the center. This is an alternate way to make money, and it uses a different currency system to upgrade: golden acorns. These slowly grow as you generate cash, and cannot be used for anything other than the tree. You will unlock many upgrades for it such as things to place on it, increasing its size, or even growing acorns of your own. The rate at which you earn golden acorns can also be affected by how many decorative points you have. Some of these are gained by planting things, and a lot more are awarded for placing things from the decorative category, which give no monetary benefit and are used solely for gaining points.

Occasionally, during gameplay, a hostile animal will come and enter your farm. It will do one of two things: scare off some of your livestock and prevent money production from them, or try to steal your crops. They can be scared off if you click on them a certain amount of times depending on their health. For example, birds spawn and try to take the fruit off of your trees and bushes. If you see one, you can click on it before it leaves and whatever it took is lost forever. Another example is wolves, which deter your cattle out of producing whatever they specialize in for however long you let the beast terrorize them. Clicking on it four times will scare it off. Everything other than birds are bested by having a couple of farm dogs. Scarecrows can be periodically placed to eliminate risk of getting your fruit stolen by those feathery pilfers.

After unlocking everything as well as a high level tree, the hole in the middle of the oak becomes large enough for you to enter. Once inside, you meet some sort of guardian of the tree who gives you what the game refers to as “god powers.” These are used to alter various aspects of the game to increase cash flow beyond simply buying more things. They allow you to enable your mouse to collect things without having to click, a direct conversion between cash and golden acorns, or the tweaking of the speed of movement, growing rate, or production rate for animal products.

Plantera 2 is quite family-friendly, as expected from a game like this. The only thing that could be even remotely concerning is the “violence” of fighting off predators, but there is no blood at all and nothing is actually killed. There aren’t even very many words that show up on the screen throughout the entire game, so language isn’t a problem either.

I enjoyed playing this game, and I think anyone else who likes idle or clicker games would like it as well. I absolutely love the art, animations, music, and atmosphere and can give nothing but praise in that field. Since release, there have been plenty of bugfixes and I’m sure you can reach out to the developer if you have any complaints.