In this hectic world we live in, many times work and appointments must come before the fun and joys in our lives, including that of getting to play videogames whenever we want. Gone are the days when we could fire up a game of our choice and spend hours toiling away – now we seem to game in stolen moments here and there. With that in mind, perhaps it is no wonder that casual games have become such a popular gaming choice (especially with women who make up the vast majority of casual game players), as casual games allow us to either jump in and get those quick fixes of gaming bliss or either play them for as long as we want when we do have the time. In honor of the casual game, we'll be bringing you a new Casual Game of the Week every Monday to help you find that fix you might be needing in your life, and this week we have: Plant Tycoon.

My thumb is definitely not green. I've tried to grow bamboo shoots, and though they've stayed alive fairly long, in the end they die. My greatest failure came as the owner of a bonsai tree, which soon died not long after my purchase of it. I see these beautiful plants and gardens, and I know I'll never have anything like an orchid being raised by me. For those with a black thumb like me comes Plant Tycoon, a plant raising sim game, and a place where I'm lucky if I barely do any better than I do in real life.

You start out with your nursery and all the requirements you'll need to start your own plant-raising facility. You'll have plenty of pots, some dirt, some seeds, water, and a few chemicals to help things out. Much like gardening in real life the fundamentals of Plant Tycoon are pretty-much the same. You'll start by filling an empty pot with soil, you'll then water the soil enough for the seed to be sustained, and then you plant the seed. Once everything is in play all it takes then is time…lots of time.

Like in the real world, growing plants isn't a fast moving adventure into capitalism, as you'll have to wait multiple minutes (even on the fastest time setting) before anything of worth happens. It takes time for your plants to grow, start budding, mature, and then ultimately produce seeds. While all of this is going on of course you've got to maintain the health of your plants, such as making sure they have enough water, or pruning away the dead leaves or branches that are affecting your plants. As you get into the more advanced plants, however, don't be surprised if things start dropping dead at an alarmingly fast rate, as they are very finicky plants.

In order to grow the more luxurious plants you'll need better soil, better water, and better everything really. In order to get the better products you'll have to sell your plants after they've reached a certain age or after they've met a certain requirements for you (like producing as many seeds as they are capable of). Once you're ready to sell a plant you simply name your price and put it out in your nursery, where you'll then get to see passersby walk and come into your shop. If you find yourself unable to sell anything, you can always spend some money on trinkets to bring people in and ultimately buy more, or you can lower your plant purchase price.

As you make more and more money, you'll be able to go to the store and buy the better supplies to sustain your plants. You'll get some more exotic plants by buying seeds from the store, but many of your plant endeavors will come from your advances in science, cross-pollinating one species of plant with another. Once a plant has reached maturity, you can then pollinate it to grow seeds for you to then grow and start the process all-over again with. If you take two species of the same plant and cross-pollinate them, they'll make seeds of the same plant. If you cross-pollinate a cactus plant with some type of tree, however, you'll create a new plant that can possibly lead to more money, and then of course you'll be able to cross-pollinate that plant and lead to rarer and better plants.

The cross-pollination is ultimately the heart of the game, as the framework story has you trying to find the six magical plants of the island. You won't walk around and stumble across these plants, but rather you must cultivate them from your own stock and find the right cross-pollination plant crossovers to create the rare plants.

A nice feature is that as long as you have the game time running, the game is always "on" and working. If you're working at your computer and have the time to easily pull the window for the game up, you can go in and out whenever you want. If you need to leave for a few hours you can turn the time down so things advance even slower. And if you want to head off for an extended time, you can stop all the time so nothing will happen in the game while you're away from your computer. It's a nice feature to be able to play the game, tweak the time, turn the game completely off, and then still have results and things to check the next time I turn the game on.

The biggest problem people will have with the game is the slow nature of it all, as things move very, very slowly; if you want instant gratification, you'll have to find it elsewhere than with this game. The act of watching seeds grow or people buying your plants isn't fun. The game gives you some diversions like bug collecting (they appear in your garden) where you can sell copies you have for a bit of money, but it's still not enough. Of course, you'll have to spend some time watching your plants, or else you might find a bug infestation, a dead leaf, and the next thing you know the plants are ruined. If you want a sim of what it must be like raising plants and selling them, I can't imagine Plant Tycoon not being close to the real thing.

The graphics are pretty simple, but the plants are really nice looking, and there is even some advanced detail in there, such as letting you target individual leaves or branches instead of making the plants one massive object. The screens are easy to navigate as well and the whole system is just very clean. The sound is really tranquil, featuring a few nice melodic songs that you can pick from, and there's plenty of ambient noise like the sound of water pouring from a can or the distant tinkle of a wind chime.

If you want fast action and snappy gameplay, Plant Tycoon isn't going to make you very happy. For those players who want a virtual garden nursery and don't mind the slow-paced nature of the entire game, they should find a fitting game to keep them happy with Plant Tycoon.

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