Grow a Garden: The surprise Roblox gaming hit

Shooting, chasing, exploring - hit video games tend to have themes that set the pulse racing.

One of the world's most popular new titles, however, is about something considerably more sedate - gardening.

Grow a Garden involves players slowly developing a little patch of virtual land. It's something that, earlier this month, more than 16m people - many of them children - chose to spend their weekend doing.

That smashed a record for concurrent players set by the somewhat more adrenalin-filled Fortnite.

What is it about this plant-growing simulation that has got so many people hooked - and could it persuade more people into real-life gardens?

Players of Grow a Garden, which features on the online gaming platform, Roblox, do exactly what the title suggests.

When I gave the game a go, I was presented with my own little brown patch of land.

To the sounds of some relaxing music, I bought seeds from the local shop, and watched them as they grew, something that continues even when you are offline.

Once your garden produces a harvest, you can sell your items. You can also steal from the gardens of others.

"It's a really fun game," says eight-year-old Eric Watson Teire, from Edinburgh. He and his 10-year-old brother, Owen, are massive fans.

Eric said "a lot" of his friends at school are playing it too.

"We can do competitions with each other - like, who's got the most Sheckles [the in-game currency], who's got the best plant."

They are not the only ones. According to Roblox, the game has had about 9bn visits since it was created in March. It says 35% of the Garden's players up until now have been aged 13 and under.

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