Urban Jungle - ★★★☆☆
Urban Jungle is the debut game from three-person studio Kylyk Games. In it, players take the role of Ayta Borisova during snapshots over almost thirty years of her life, between the years 1996 and 2024. As with many cosy games, it opens with Ayta during a fairly miserable moment in her life, worn down by corporate life and being yet another cog in an unappreciative system. You could call it a cliché, but it’s obviously a message that resonates with a lot of people – I doubt there’s many out there who are lucky enough to have never worked a job that was, to put it lightly, unfulfilling.
What Ayta is really passionate about is her plants. It’s an interest she inherits from her grandmother at a young age, and carries with her through her life. She seems to be particularly apt at looking after them, too: as the game’s Steam page states, in Urban Jungle “you won’t have to deal with watering or pest control – the plants just need a good spot,” such is the power of Ayta’s green thumb. Given that the core gameplay comes from players placing plenty of plants throughout each playthrough, it’s much appreciated – I suspect the cosy vibes may have been ruined slightly by plants dying off left right and centre.
Image: Kylyk Games — Grandma kicking off Ayta’s interest in plants
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Developer: Kylyk Games
Publisher: Kylyk Games
Release: 21 March 2025
Retail Price (Steam): 11,99€/$11.99/£8.99
The game offers a not-dissimilar experience to a game I loved: Unpacking. Despite the addition of a whole plant system – ostensibly the game’s core mechanic, which we’ll get onto later – there’s clear inspiration from Witch Beam’s 2021 title.
The beauty of Unpacking was that it never told you what was going on: it was up to the player to discern from the clues given by the items they unpacked. As much as I appreciated Ayta’s story and her relationships with her family and friends, the emotional beats didn’t hit anywhere close to as hard as I found those in Unpacking did. I don’t necessarily think there’s anything wrong with taking heavy inspiration from a game – a look at my rating for The Roottrees are Dead would show that – but with the parallels there to so clearly be drawn, it left Urban Jungle’s story feeling a little wilted.
At this point, you might be wondering what this game actually has to do with Unpacking, as, despite the taking-objects-out-of-cardboard-boxes-and-placing-them-in-a-room mechanic being a core part of Urban Jungle’s gameplay, it’s hardly advertised in any materials I’ve seen. The focus is, naturally, on the plants.
Image: Kylyk Games — Anyone up for some unpacking?
Those plants come in 25 different species, each with three requirements: whether they need light, whether they need moisture, and whether there are other species they like or dislike. Initially I was quite diligent about all three – trying to make sure my Cacti has a Snake Plant nearby to keep it happy – but with the amount of plants I found myself placing, it became something of a chore. I didn’t feel like I was being punished when I didn’t do that, and oftentimes I’d happen into those preferences just by placing plants based on their first two criteria - light and moisture.
What that leaves players with is, effectively, four different types of plants: those that need light and water, those that need light but no water, those that need water but no light, and those that need neither. Once an area has been set up in a level’s house to match each of those four options – which is as simple as moving a humidifier next to a window, or turning a light on – players can simply put any plant they unlock into the suitable area, and quickly complete the level. The game claims that players “need to think strategically about where to place each plant” but I can’t say I agree.
Image: Kylyk Games
There’s also a handful of annoying or unusual bugs – I had to quit and rejoin the second level as poor Rufus the cat was stuck behind a bench, the music occasionally has a jarring change, and I once encountered a black line in the middle of the screen and thought some of my monitor’s pixels had died, until I moved the mouse over it and it covered them up. There is a question as to if the game could have benefited from a little more polish, exemplified further by a personal pet peeve of mine: dialogue options that return exactly the same response regardless of what is chosen.
So, I’ve spent the last five hundred (and twenty-one, if you’re counting) words more-or-less criticising Urban Jungle, because clearly, in my opinion it has its fair share of problems… and yet, I maintain that it’s a good game. I’m not sure I can honestly say I spent much time thinking about those issues during my playthrough, and while I was reminded of Unpacking a fair amount, Urban Jungle offers something distinct from that – I certainly got more out of the experience than I would have done from a replay of the game it takes inspiration from. I enjoyed the majority of my time playing it, and found myself getting lost in the process of placing plants and beautifying each area.
Image: Kylyk Games
I tend not to go into aesthetics too much as they’re clear for anyone reading to see — readers can make your own opinions on them — but I personally think it’s a wonderful-looking game. And that might well be the crux when it comes to Urban Jungle: if you like how it looks, there’s probably enough about it to satisfy you over your four-to-five hour playthrough. Without trying to sound reductive, if you look at it and instinctively think “that’s not for me,” then you’re probably right.
For players who really enjoy getting lost in the game’s surroundings, there’s plenty for them to do, up to and including a creative mode which allows them full control of the game’s furnishings. I think the majority of players will be satisfied with a single playthrough and not see much merit in returning to Urban Jungle after completing the campaign, but for those it resonates most strongly with, there could be something special for them to keep coming back to, in spite of its flaws. Urban Jungle is awarded ★★★☆☆ by IndieLoupe.com.
The reviewed product was provided by the publisher.
Image: Kylyk Games
