Plants on Fire boasts a healthy variety of fruits and vegetables, but you won’t be growing and harvesting crops here. Instead, your anthropomorphic flora will be waging battle against those of your opponent, defending and attacking at the same time to see who’s the last plant standing. Let’s dig in.

Just like a great fruit salad, the game itself is a delicious mix of multiple genres. Before the battle, you’ll build a deck of nine different plants to bring onto the field. The deployment uses autochess mechanics: there will be a limited number of plants that you can buy with coins, and you can refresh the store for new options. Combining multiple copies of the same plant will create a stronger version with extra abilities. Then it’s all about defending your base’s captain with clever plant placement while troops from your side go on the attack at the same time in a thrilling tug-of-war.

Each of your plants has its own strengths, so think carefully about whether you really want them in your deck and where to place them. The rapid-firing corn cob can deal lots of damage to a single target, while the gunslinging apple can hit multiple targets at once. Supporting plants can play critical roles, such as the leek that boosts the power of surrounding plants or the peanut that gives extra power to upgraded plants. The strength of your attacking troops is determined by the power of your defending plants, so always try to maximise their power statistics.

The game doesn’t just stop at the standard ranked match mode. Rumble Chess mode takes the challenge up a couple of notches, and placement spaces here are bought with coins. There are also special plants and power boosts that only appear in this mode – some actually reduce your captain’s health in exchange for immense power. And just like an autochess game, you’ll fight the other seven players, one at a time, to see who’s the real cream of the crop.

And that’s not even the end of it. In co-op mode, you’ll pair up with a friend against relentless hordes of enemies; adventure mode gives you unique puzzle-like challenges; boss battle mode pits your plants against humongous bosses. There’s so much going on in this tower defence, you’ll want to grow roots and never leave!