Ophelia Payne

There’s something special about the way a garden shop smells. If you know, you know. That damp earth that smells like an eternal Spring. Leafy Corner, from Fireline Games, feels like it would smell like that. I’m not even sure that makes sense, but this cozy, relaxing simulation game has you running a small plant shop, and that’s what I envisioned while playing it.

Once you create your character, Leafy Corner starts with an empty shop, a minimal budget and a small inventory of plants, pots and decor to choose from. Choose a pot and plant, water it and watch it grow. Add shelves to place your plants for sale and serve the customers who want to buy them. The more mature a plant is, the more it is worth so you can toggle a particular plant as ‘not for sale’ if you want to make sure you have a variety of plants and values to choose from. You will use money from the sales to continue this process, expanding your business. Be sure to water your plants as required. But not overwater them, or they will die, and you will have wasted your money. 

There is a task list, and each time you check off a task like selling a certain number of plants of a particular size, having a certain number of decorations in your shop, or completing telephone orders, you will earn points to open more items to use in your shop. Gaining access to medium and then large plants and plant pots. You will also eventually earn enough money to open 2 expansions for your shop as well. I loved the way I could watch the plants grow, choosing the plant pots and plants for each, trying to find a balance that kept customers happy.

Sometimes customers will have a request for a specific item, and you hopefully have it in stock to sell to them. They might only have a picture or description of a plant they are looking for, but thankfully you can reference your trust guidebook to help determine what plant it is and immediately know if you have it in stock. In-person and phone orders might also ask for specific requirements, like a plant that doesn’t require a lot of maintenance, is pet-friendly, or has a unique colour or pattern, for example.  Phone orders are generally a little more patient, and you will have time to plant the required plants before fulfilling the orders if required.

My mother is an avid gardener, and I asked her about some of the plants in the game; it turns out that the game is also botanically accurate in its descriptions of the plants. Making learning fun through video games? Yes, please. It’s educational without feeling like homework, and I enjoyed and looked forward to unlocking as many plants as I could. I often would look at my guidebook to determine what I would like to unlock next. It is entirely up to you how you choose to spend your points.

As you progress, you will have plants become variegated varieties. Once this happens, you can also use the propagation skill to replant and grow more of them, remembering to mark them as ‘not for sale’ if you want them to reach maturity to propagate or earn more money. I hadn’t opened all the variegated varieties of the plants available as of the time of writing this, and that is my mission when I start again. Open every plant in the guidebook.

At its heart, Leafy Corner is a management sim and a lovely one at that. The customer requests kept each day interesting and some of the rude replies I got when I picked the wrong plant for them caught me off guard. Some great writing in the game by someone who must have worked a customer service job at some point.

There are not a lot of gameplay mechanics here, and I can see that it might start to feel repetitive, but in the 7ish hours I played, I didn’t feel that way at all. This is a cozy and slower-paced game, and it delivers on that. I never got tired of watching the tiny seeds grow into mature plants, and I loved the odd customer requests to keep it interesting. You can close up shop while you restock, or stay open 24 hours to sell plants, stocking between customers.

One thing that was missing that I would have appreciated is a way to filter my book into categories like succulent, pet-friendly, etc. I only had the option to search by small, medium, or large, and the plants in each category weren’t alphabetical, so sometimes the manual searching for a particular plant took longer than it could have. This didn’t dampen my joy for the game but would be a fantastic quality-of-life improvement. Also, the tutorial doesn’t cover how reputation works. I got stuck trying to know how to unlock higher levels at one point and, through trial and error, found the tips section where it showed what I needed to do to progress.

A little more freedom in the camera movement would be lovely as well. As my shop got busier, sometimes plants would be hidden with no way to spin the camera around. There is also a cat in a window above the shop that I couldn’t seem to pet, and it made me sad. It would come and go during the day, and all I wanted to do was pet the cat. Again, a small complaint.

The soundtrack loops but is never annoying or distracting. Instrumental pieces felt like the perfect accompaniment to running the shop.

Of course, the colour palette leans heavily on greens and natural colours, but you can add pops of brighter colours through furniture pieces or even wallpaper. The furniture choices felt limited in design style, leaning into minimalistic wood and black metal, but this also meant that the plants were the star of the show. Décor items like lighting, area rugs, vases full of lowers and even gardening tools and pottery pieces can be used to fully create a shop that is personalized or leans into a particular theme if you have one in mind.

While, in theory, you are open 24 hours, it’s always daylight and always sunny. This simplifies the game day loop, but you just have to suspend any reality and go with the flow. It didn’t bother me, and I honestly didn’t even think about it too much until after about 30 in-game days. A day/night cycle or even some weather changes would add even more to the cozy nature of the game.

Priced under $ 10 USD, it took me about 5 hours to check off all the Steam achievements, and another 2+ hours to stop playing it to sit down and write this. Needless to say, I loved it, and I will be diving back in with a new save to design something new.

Until next time…be good to yourself and be good to each other.

**Special Thanks to Fireline Games for the review code**