Everybody loves palpating their turnips; just look at the success of Stardew Valley and its ilk for proof of that. But it turns out people love some vegetable action, if the staggering success of Roblox game Grow a Garden is any indication, given it’s seemingly smashed through Fortnite’s previous gargantuan record for most players at the same time.
Let’s break out some numbers. According to third-party monitoring tools, Grow a Garden – the specifics of which we’ll get to shortly – soared past 16m concurrent players this weekend on Roblox (16,411,769 to be exact). By way of comparison, Fortnite announced record-breaking concurrents of 15.3m players during its Marvel season finale event back in Covid-era 2020.
So what, you may be wondering, has garnered all this attention? Grow a Garden is, according to its official description from developer The Garden Game, very much what it sounds like. It’s a game of buying seeds, shoving them in the ground, then waiting for your blueberries, coconuts, daffodils etc. to grow – which they’ll happily do whether you’re in-game or offline.
After that, you can sell your massive produce for profit, purchasing more seeds or temporary boosts you’ll need to slowly craft in real-time, then start the whole cycle over again. Frankly, absolutely nothing about it sounds like the sort of thing that might capture the imagination of 16m players all at once, but then I’m not a 13-year-old looking to do something mindless online with my friends after school. Also, there’re Grow a Garden pets, so maybe that’s the appeal.