The League, Gift Boxes and the Garden
Past the puzzles themselves, Plant Path has a quiet long game: a daily league to climb, gift boxes to open, and a window-sill garden that grows out of them.
The league
The league opens once you finish level 24. It is a 24-hour race for points: the cycle starts the moment you open the game and ends exactly a day later, at which point the standings are settled and a new league begins. Open the game at one o'clock and the league ends at one o'clock tomorrow. Come back days later at five and a fresh cycle starts at five.
You share the table with forty-nine regulars, fifty places counting yours. They are Plant Path's own cast rather than other people online: the game runs entirely on your device, with no account and no connection, so the league is there at any hour, offline included. The cast is permanent, with the same names and faces every day, and each regular has habits of their own, a few solves before breakfast, a burst at lunch, a long evening run, so the standings move all day and a lead taken early has to be defended late. The table opens small, fifteen seats at the whistle, and fills through the day as the rest of the cast walks in.
Every solve banks points: a base for the board plus a bonus for pace, with the daily paying half again as much and a hinted solve paying less. The points arrive over the couple of minutes a solve takes, and while you are solving, a rival or two at your heels can slip past, so the rank-up screen at the end plays your climb back over them. Finish in the top three when the league ends and you earn a gift box.
Gift boxes
There are three ways to earn a box:
- Every tenth level of the ladder, which closes a block and pays a box.
- Playing seven days in a row.
- A top-three finish in the league.
A box is earned closed and opened from the menu whenever you like. What is inside is decided only at the moment of opening, and the roll always looks at what you already own, so a box never drops something you have. Prizes come in three rarities, common, rare and legendary, and a rarity with nothing left to give falls through to the next. A player who owns everything is paid in league points instead.
The garden
The prizes are pots and plants for the window sill on the menu screen. The sill has five positions, and each prize is a particular shape in a particular wash, won for one particular spot, so the crimson bloom for the second position is a different drop from the same bloom for the third. Boxes also hold characters and frames for the avatar that represents you in the league.
The studio lets you arrange what you have won and choose the sky behind the window: morning, noon, evening or night, or Auto, which follows the time of day on your device. There is nothing to buy in the garden and nothing to feed; it grows at the pace you play.
Your progress
On the web, everything is kept in your browser's storage, with no account to make. In the iOS and Android apps, progress is saved to the cloud as well, iCloud on Apple and Google Play Games on Android, so a new phone picks up where the old one left off. See the apps for the details.