BUBBA CHOP GROVE

You chop trees in BUBBA CHOP GROVE by clicking them, and you can drag across a row to slash every tree in the way or click fast enough to set off a Chop Frenzy. This is a short incremental idle game you can actually finish. The story takes about 5-6 hours, and if you want to keep going after that, the rematches never run out.

Each tree wobbles, creaks and falls over in a puff of dust, and a sapling pops up where it stood. If your hand gets tired, hold the mouse button down and it keeps chopping. Nobody gets hurt here. The trees dust themselves off and grow right back.

Lumber lets you hire a crew that chops for you, with 14 kinds to choose from, a path to pick for each one as it grows and 15 hats to put on them. Lumberjacks, Archers, Knights, Lancers and Monks go at the trees in fairly normal ways. The rest are odder. There are piglets who sniff out treasure and woodpeckers who peck knotholes into the trunks.

This is the idle part of the game. They keep chopping when you stop clicking, and while you're off doing something else. You can switch a crew's path whenever you're not in a fight. Most hats turn up while you chop and a few are gifts from friends, and each kind of crew wears one for that hat's bonus.

To befriend the 13 grumpy Legendary Trees, and the Giga Tree after them, you chop each one down in a timed fight, and you can give up anytime. Each one guards the next bigger kind of tree. The first is the Sulky Stump, who was already chopped once and is still annoyed about it.

Win and the tree sulks for a moment, then decides you are friends. Friends give you Heartwood, and old friends are happy to rematch you for more of it later.

Your grove spreads across five lands with day and night, a Golden Tree that shows up now and then and a wandering merchant who drops by with a deal. You start in Buttercup Meadow, and Maple Hollow, Blossom Lake, Velvetmoss Pines and Starwood Heights each bring bigger trees. The moss in Velvetmoss Pines is said to be so soft that the redwoods tiptoe.

At night the lanterns come on and lumber is worth more, and there are fireflies to catch. Click the Golden Tree quickly, because it gets up on its root-feet and waddles off if you're too slow. The merchant brings one deal per visit, lumber or Heartwood, and then moves on.

The rebirth system comes in two layers, Replant and Rebloom, and between them you collect Amber Acorns for the Acorn Tree, Dawn Blossoms for the Blossom Garden and Heartwood for Relics. A Replant takes the grove back to the start. Your Legendary friends stay, and so do your hats, Heartwood and Relics.

Every acorn you earn adds to your production even after you spend it, so there's no reason to hoard them. They go into the Acorn Tree. Seedling Savings puts lumber in the bank at the start of every Replant and Old Hands keeps some of each crew on. Helping Paws gets you a squirrel foreman who does the hiring for you.

Rebloom is the big one. It also resets your acorns, the Acorn Tree, your Heartwood and your Relics, and pays you in Dawn Blossoms. Nothing in the Blossom Garden ever resets, and your first Rebloom brings a gift basket with the Beaver Crew and some helpers who Replant and upgrade on their own.

Heartwood comes from your Legendary friends and from jobs the villagers post, and it buys Relics like Grandpa's Whetstone and the Crown of Twigs. Befriending the Giga Tree ends the story, and after that the rematches keep getting tougher for as long as you want to play.

BUBBA CHOP GROVE on PC has no ads and no microtransactions, and it comes with 100 Steam achievements and Steam Cloud to keep your grove in sync between computers. Your crew keeps chopping while the game is minimized, and if you close it, a Welcome Back summary shows what they got done while you were gone.

The pixel art is scaled in whole steps, so it stays crisp on a laptop screen and on a 4K monitor, and there's an interface size setting if the text feels too small or too big. You can play windowed or fullscreen (F11 or Alt+Enter), turn on reduced motion and set the music and sound volumes separately.

A grouchy old stump named Ringsby will show you the ropes, and the Grove Guide has the real numbers if you ever want them.