In keeping with Offworld’s recent fixation on gardening games, I’ve been playing Viridi, a mysteriously-soothing game about taking care of different varieties of succulent plants. You gently water them and they grow slowly, whether you have the game running or not.
The attention to detail makes this game a delight, if you like desktop gardening—you choose your own decorative pot for the succulents, along whose edge a tiny snail traces meditatively. Each week, a new plant becomes available. You can learn about different types of succulents by their scientific names, or you can name your aloe vera after yourself and promptly drown it, as I did.
Viridi, made by Ice Water Games, is available on Steam. It’s free, but a mysterious map feature is available for sale inside the game—network features, maybe?