Roblox’s Grow a Garden Surpasses Fortnite With 16.4 Million Players

Anyone older than 25 likely has fond — or madly frustrating — memories of playing FarmVille, the popular browser game that lets users grow virtual crops and herd pixelated animals. Agriculture aficionados can rejoice: Generation Alpha’s FarmVille has arrived.

Grow a Garden, a simplistic farming simulation that involves planting seeds and collecting exotic pets, has exploded as one of the most highly played titles of the year. Technically an “experience” within the game-creation platform Roblox, it smashed its own record for concurrent users by reeling in 16.4 million active players on Saturday.

It is a genuinely shocking feat. That number is more than Fortnite’s peak and greater than the concurrent player records of the top five Steam games combined.

Grow a Garden’s allure might baffle anyone who has never toyed with slow-paced world-builders like Animal Crossing or Tomodachi Life. Players nurture a potpourri of plants and pets, which they can buy and sell in exchange for the in-game currency Sheckles, which can also be bought with Roblox’s in-platform currency Robux (which can itself be purchased with real dollars).

Plots begin barren before users transform them into fantastical safaris of shimmering frogs and prancing monkeys that each have their own special abilities. Suddenly, a player’s dismal square brims with vibrant vegetation and beanstalks shooting into the sky.

Numerous qualities elevate the game from a standard farm sim. It is the first major Roblox game to integrate offline growth, which encourages players to return to see changes. There are multiple time-sensitive components, including shops that restock with new items every five minutes and weekly drops (like the fruit-pollinating “Bizzy Bees”) with exclusive items that feel like can’t-miss moments. Every little element has been shaped to keep people hooked, including blind-box pet eggs and the ability to steal things from other users’ farms.