Molehill Empire: a gnome-run garden with its own market stall

What it is

Molehill Empire is a humorous gardening game from upjers, played in the browser without any download or installation. It's set in Green Valley, where hard-working garden gnomes help you look after your beds. You plant vegetables, water them, harvest them, and as you level up, new plants and more ways to expand and lay out your garden become available.

Strictly speaking it's a garden, not a farm: no barns full of cattle, no tractors. But the heart of the genre is all here. You grow things, you sell them, and you put the money back into the plot. Bees produce honey as a second source of income, and research brings new plants and growing options.

The market stall

This is where Molehill Empire differs from most of the line. At the marketplace in Green Valley you sell your harvest from your own market stall. You set your prices, keep an eye on supply and demand, and decide when the time is right to sell. The money then goes into new plants, a bigger garden or decorations.

That small detail changes how the game feels. Instead of a fixed price for every carrot, you are reading a market made by other players. Choosing which vegetables to grow becomes a question of what's scarce, not only of what's quick, and that gives a plain gardening game a pleasant edge of strategy.

A garden full of side plots

Around the vegetable beds sits a surprising collection of extras. There's a Bonsai Garden for growing miniature trees, and Monster Fruits that grow to enormous size with patience. You can send gnomes into a mine to dig for gemstones and metals and sell what they find, grow ivy to impressive heights, send vegetables across the game world by bird mail, and even book your gnomes a holiday through the travel agency so they come back refreshed. A Display Garden lets you show off your best design to other players and collect their ratings.

Neighbours and guilds

Molehill Empire is sociable in a neighbourly way. You can visit other gardens, help neighbours water their plants, chat, trade with fellow gardeners and join a guild to work towards shared goals. Regular competitions, rankings, quests and seasonal events keep the calendar busy for those who want it busy.

The time it asks for

Short rounds: water, harvest, replant. The market adds a little extra, because you'll want to glance at prices before you sell. Competitions and rankings are where the time can grow; they're optional, and the garden carries on without them.

How the money side works

Molehill Empire is free to start, with optional in-game purchases. upjers says on its premium information page that playing its games is generally possible for free and that the premium currency is not strictly required; it can buy decorations and special features, speed play up, or be exchanged into the regular currency. Purchases are one-time payments, and upjers says it doesn't offer subscriptions.

A note on the sequel: upjers also makes Molehill Empire 2, which it presents mainly as an app for iOS and Android, and it states that the app can't be linked to a browser game account. If you start there, treat it as a fresh garden.