Let’s talk about Life by You gardening! If you’ve been following the life sim genre of video games for a while, you’ve probably heard of Life by You. While the game’s early access launch has been delayed a couple times, that hasn’t stopped the developers from continuing to share their progress on YouTube and their social media platforms. And it hasn’t stopped us from talking about it!

Craft your own seeds, fertilizer, and sprinklers!

One of the game designers talked about the Life by You gardening mechanics in a YouTube video. As you might expect, the basic concept is pretty straight-forward. Plant seeds, water them, harvest the produce. It’s similar to many other life sim and gardening games. But Life by You gardening makes good use of the game’s crafting system, which not every other similar game does (yes, we mean The Sims).

Get Crafty with Life by You Gardening

Let’s dig into Life by You gardening and learn all about how this familiar mechanic with a crafty twist works in this highly anticipated upcoming life sim game.

Acquiring Seeds

Seeds can be acquired in two ways; your humans can purchase them at a grocery store or online through the computer. They can also craft them! That’s right; if you have freshly harvested produce, you can use some of it to produce seeds to plant your next harvest.

Having the option to craft your own seeds can really help save a lot of money and allow your humans to run a completely self-sufficient farm if they want to. It may seem like a simple mechanic, and it is, but it’s a pretty powerful one in terms of the freedom it offers players.

Planting and Tending

Like pretty much every other gardening game, planted crops need to be watered and weeded regularly to grow into healthy adult plants you can harvest from. All plants need to be watered once a day but different plants have different growth times. Rarer plants take longer to grow than common ones.

Plants that have weeds won’t die, but they will stop growing. It’s to your benefit to weed your garden as promptly as possible to keep your plant growing so you can harvest it. The longer you leave it, the longer you delay your harvest and by extension, your profits (or your dinner).

Plants that don’t receive enough water will wither and die. Plants tat have withered completely cannot be revived. They’re dead and need to be removed and replaced with a new plant.

If your human is just starting out as a gardener, you’ll want to have them working in their garden as much as possible, especially if you want to turn it into your main source of income. Why? Because skilled gardeners can harvest more produce from a plant than an unskilled gardener! So there’s a real benefit to developing your gardening skill.

Highly skilled gardeners can also craft sprinklers for their garden! Unlike seeds, sprinklers cannot be purchased. They are a reward for building up your gardening skill. They are quite expensive to craft but if you’re planning on running a huge farm operation, it’s going to be worth your while to craft those sprinklers because they will keep your garden watered forever!

Fertilizing

While plants don’t need to be fertilized, they will benefit greatly from it. Fertilized plants yield more produce than unfertilized plants. Since skilled gardeners also harvest more produce than unskilled gardeners, you can imagine how a skilled gardener could use fertilizer to benefit even further and collect the most produce possible.

Like seeds, fertilizer can be purchased or crafted. You can craft your own fertilizer using seashells collected from beaches. Being able to craft your own fertilizer is another way to save money and maximize profits.

Harvest Your Produce

With Life by You gardening, there are two types of plants; annuals and perennials. In other words, single-harvest plants and multi-harvest plants. Some plants can be harvested from multiple times while other plants need to be replanted again after harvesting.

The amount of produce you get from harvesting depends on both your human’s gardening level and whether the plant was fertilized or not.

It’s up to you whether you want to treat Life by You gardening like a hobby or a business. Both are possible. It just depends on how much time you want to dedicate to it.

Not interested in having your own garden but still want to dabble in it? Check out these community gardens in Life by You!