To whoever is reading this article, I’m going to be completely honest. I, a 20 year old soon to be junior in college, love Roblox. 

I can’t help it. I’ve been playing since I was 11. And before, I was watching people play it while dreaming of my own account since I don’t even know when. The platform is free, the games are nostalgic and easy to get a grasp of, and dammit, I love my iPad. So, of course, I heard the breakout game “Grow a Garden” that brought millions to the platform last summer was getting a sequel.

It isn’t the only Roblox game to have a sequel. In fact, the ever-popular classic game “Murder Mystery 2” is, in its name, a sequel — and the more popular version. But “Grow a Garden” is already popular. So popular that in its prime, it would have millions playing live, and millions more come to the platform who would normally cast it aside. So what does the sequel have that the first didn’t? What was missing from it? Or maybe, what went wrong?

The first thing I noticed after loading into the game was the aesthetics of it. The studded, almost LEGO texture of the ground and other objects was missing. To those unaware, Roblox used to be filled with this look in its early days. Having such a feature gave the original “Grow a Garden” a classic feel that invited players hesitant to its playstyle to give it a try.

That doesn’t particularly deter me from trying it out. However, the game also feels faster, like it’s pushing for you to do more. This, I truly do not like. Sure, the allure of the games are to collect, grow, and sell as many plants as you can. But there was such a simplicity to buying and growing seeds in the early months of the first game last year. Instead of feeling cozy, it now feels competitive. 

This competitive nature I found is even in the new features of the sequel. Instead of paying Robux — fake Roblox money paid for with real money — to steal someone’s plant, you can now steal it at night when the owner of a garden is distracted. 

To stop thefts, building defenses is now an option, as well as competitive guilds available for players to join. 

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Now, did I have fun with this new competitive lens? A little bit, yeah. The game is also less cluttered than the original, which I quite like. But that describes the problem. The original got so big that players continually wanted something. And when they wanted something, more and more updates filled the game with what ended up becoming visual noise.

“Grow a Garden” isn’t the only game made by the same developers to encounter this issue. A slightly older game, “Fisch” — which is just fish instead of a garden — ran into the same issue of becoming bloated with stuff when it had been sold to another company. When the issue became apparent, the old developer created a “Fisch 2”.

But like “Fisch 2”, “Grow a Garden 2” does not have that comforting feeling it once gave when nonRoblox players flooded the platform. The new features are fine and work well with the direction the concept is going. But to me, it is simply not the same.