Urban Jungle turns houseplants into a puzzle of perfect apartment layouts
No watering can required
- Arrange plants across cosy apartment rooms
- Unlock new greenery through clever placement
- Follow stories hidden inside each home
The problem with houseplants is that they’re alive. They need watering, they pick up bugs, and they sulk if you put them in a place they don’t like. Thankfully, Urban Jungle skips all of that. Your plants just need a good spot, and the point of the sim is to find exactly that. It’s the third piece I've filed today, and easily the calmest, given the last one had an ocean trying to eat you.
Urban Jungle looks quite sweet. It has you working through apartments, arranging plants to make each room cosier and nicer to look at, and placing them well unlocks new ones to play with. Lamps and humidifiers get involved too, changing how a room feels once the greenery is in, so it isn't all down to where the pots go. There's no timer and nothing chasing you, so you can shuffle everything around as often as you like.
That optimal placement business is a problem for me, personally. I'm an over-planner. Give me a scoring system and I'll find the best possible layout, then realise I've optimised all the fun out of a room full of ferns. In fairness, nothing here stops you just putting a pot wherever it looks nice. Who's going to tell you off?
The story is told through the rooms themselves, following whoever lives there across different stages of their life. Telling a story through someone's stuff is an old trick, and a good one. Anyone who's helped a friend move house knows how much a room gives away about a person, usually more than they'd like.
A Brother's Wedding, a story expansion, comes included as well. And most importantly, you can also pet the cat.
Urban Jungle is out now on iOS and Android.
Our list of the best simulation games on iOS has a few more similar adventures if you liked this one.
