Mary Jane, bud, ganja, reefer, chronic, herb, pot, weed… the marijuanas. Developer Vile Monarch and publishers Devolver Digital and Klabater have gone a bit Randy Marsh and released a game about running a marijuana business. But does Weedcraft Inc leave you with a mellow buzz or is it more like the effects of an eighth of cheap and nasty ditch weed?

“Weedcraft Inc explores the business of producing, breeding and selling weed in America, delving deep into the financial, political and cultural aspects of the country’s complex relationship with this troublesome and promising plant.”

There are a ton of business management games out there and you can turn your digital hand to managing pretty much anything. Theme parks, hospitals, prisons, cities, entire civilisations and now… hashish and why not?

Honestly, my few couple of hours with Weedcraft Inc really left me feeling underwhelmed. It was very basic and tedious. Plant a strand of weed, water it, click here and click there, the monotony on this one set in pretty fast. However, once I got through that initial hour or so, the game really began to open up and you’ll be kept very busy. You’ll soon find that you need to set the chemical composition of the soil, adjust the temperature of your growing location and more. Weedcraft Inc really offers some quite deep gameplay and a lot deeper than it first seems.

As you grow your product, you’ll need to find somewhere to sell it and people to sell it to. This can also be quite deep as you’ll need to keep an eye on what strand of weed customers prefer, tinker with your pricing and improve the quality of your supplies. You’ll also need to deal with rival sellers, the police and even your own staff. Build relationships (good and bad) with a multitude of NPCs.

To keep the police off your back, you may need to bribe, charm or even create fronts for your growing and selling locations. Talk to government officials and just maybe, you may go from dodgy backstreet wacky-backy seller to a licensed medical marijuana seller. There really is a lot to unpack with Weedcraft Inc to the point where it may even be a bit too involved. This is a game where you really do need to pay attention as there can be a lot going on all at the same time. Different parts of town will have different customer bases and they will all want different weed. You’ll be juggling your ganja growing and improving your supply, while trying to stay one step ahead of your competition and trying to keep the police at bay, on top of ensuring that your staff stay happy and motivated.

Weedcraft Inc doesn’t just let you grow weed, you can research and create your very own strands too. Try to make the very best product that you can. Go from selling cheap and common herb, to a more rare and even epic variation. The better your product is, the more you can charge for it. The more you charge, the more profit you make. The more profit you make, the more you can invest in new and better equipment to keep improving your weed strands and your staff.

Weedcraft Inc gives you three scenarios to play through. The first works as an extended tutorial that teaches you the bare basics and several tricks to keep a steady flow of cash coming in. The other two are tricker and will have you having to apply everything that you learned in the first scenario. There’s also a custom mode that lets you create your own game with a ton of options to make the game as easy or difficult as you wish.

This one will set you back around £20, depending on your chosen platform, with Weedcraft Inc being available on everything right now. I’ve been playing this on the Xbox with a controller, I do have to say that it can be very annoying and fiddley at times. I’m sure that this plays so much better on PC, but the console controls are not very well optimised and they can even get a bit confusing at times with so much going on and so many menus to navigate. But if you can overlook some annoying controls (or if you go for the PC version), then Weedcraft Inc is a very enjoyable game, once you get past the monotonous opening couple of hours.