Yardlings

Yardlings (2020) is a strategy fighting game where you are a team of vegetables. Your task is to dominate the play area with your troops. It's a cartoony, vegetable twist on classic real-time strategy games like Command and Conquer or Halo Wars.

---

In Yardlings you command a vegetable team, and the idea is to create more of your vegetables to dominate the field, and/or attack your opponent vegetables and capture their home. The battle area contains flowers and plants that you can capture by attacking them, and they, once captured, create troops for you. Capture enough flowers and you win.

You can also attack vegetables from other teams to advance on their home base. Unlike other games of this genre you are a character in the field of play rather than a god-like cursor directing troops, which makes it a little more difficult as you can only direct units you are close to.

The game has a campaign mode and a battle mode where you can have multiple computer controlled foes. You can also play this as a local multiplayer with up to 4 players in a free-for-all or 2-versus-2 Cooperative Battle.

The game has a hand-drawn aesthetic, and a retro gaming feel. The simple premise gets harder with every level of the campaign, and requires strategic thinking more than brute strength. A good starting point for children wishing to play battle simulation games.

---

Our examiner, Andrea Walney, first checked Yardlings (Sokpop) 2 years ago. It was re-examined by Jo Robertson and updated 19 months ago.