Lawn Mowing Simulator 2: the leaf blower was the most requested feature, which sums the genre up nicely

There is a detail in Lawn Mowing Simulator 2's description worth stopping at: the studio thanks players who racked up hours in the first game, some of them more than a thousand.

A thousand hours mowing lawns. If you were still wondering whether this genre had an audience, the answer is yes, and it is serious.

What the sequel brings

The game heads to the USA for a new career in lawncare, and it widens just about everything.

Real licensed equipment, with partners Kubota, SCAG and STIGA. New mowers, string trimmers, and the celebrated leaf blower, which the studio presents as heavily requested by the community.

I highlight that because it is revealing: in this genre, demand is not for more action but for more different tasks. It is not the mowing people enjoy, it is finishing a job properly.

Eleven locations, more than the first game had at launch, with suburban lawns, commercial sites and municipal grounds. Most offer multiple contracts of varying size and theme.

And new tasks beyond mowing: leaf blowing and weed clearance, giving each location more than one reason to exist.

The career mode rebuilt

That is the real change for anybody who likes the management side.

Career mode has been completely overhauled, with a fully explorable 3D headquarters from which to run your business, and enhanced character customisation.

It is the kind of addition that is easy to mock and hard to replace. In a work simulator, having a place of your own turns a series of contracts into an activity with a centre.

What to know

The game launches today, developed and published by Skyhook Games, with no price displayed and no reviews as I write. It is single-player, controller recommended, playable at your own pace.

My reservation is structural and I offer it without malice: a mowing simulator is not judged like another game. There is no tension, no dramatic progression, no surprise. There is a task, a visible result, and the satisfaction of having done it well.

If that speaks to you, this genre is probably the most honest on the whole of Steam, because it promises exactly what it delivers.

If it does not speak to you, no list of industrial partners will change your mind, and that is fine.

What seems well judged here is listening to a community that asked neither for explosions nor for multiplayer, but for a leaf blower and more types of job. That is a studio that knows its audience.

How many hours did you put into the first one? The question is not rhetorical, we are comparing on the InsertCoins Discord.