This prototype is an honest attempt by our team to express the concepts of seasoning, cycling, and restoration through a simple and meditative gameplay experience.

Your objective as a player is to discover and harvest 10 "Valuable" plants. Countless of them spawn on the field, continuously changing their surroundings. Under specific conditions, new plants can be born.

Observe and follow nature

With the ideas and ambitions of Regenerate Jam in mind, we decided to experiment with a type of farming game that follows the rules and principles of nature. Instead of letting players grind-force through the well-explored and established circle of plowing, sowing, fertilizing, watering and harvesting, we put self-growing plants in first position. All plants have certain needs (in terms of soil, lightning conditions and more), which are unknown to the players in the beginning.

With patience and careful observation, players have to find out, under which conditions each plant grows and thrieves to its ripe state. Once they successfully plant and grow a speciment in the right place, players earn points and the characteristics of that plant get documented in the Almanach (mechanic isn't fully available in game).

Respect the circle of life

When plants die, they will change the place they were dying at. They might turn the quality of soil, or sunlight conditions in that place change due to their absence. This can cause a chain of effects, creating the right conditions for new plant species to grow or changing conditions for neighbouring plants.

Seasons

Seasons add another layer of principles and rules to the game. In Spring and Autumn wet tiles as an example can turn into water - making existing ponds grow and spread. In Summer the opposite is the case - water tiles tend to fall dry. Seasons also influence how many and what type of plants tend to sproud and ripe (mechanic isn't in the game, but seasons get expressed through visual and audio effects).

Farm sustainable

Understanding and learning these principles will give players the opportunity to thoughtfully farm valuable plants in a way that respects their own needs as well as the needs of the self-growing plants around. Only those players following and respecting the rules and conditions created by nature will succeed in such a sustainable way of nature-embedded farming (mechanic isn't fully available in game).