Gregor Mendel’s Pro-Botanist

A screenshot of Gregor Mendel's Pro-Botanist.

Download Gregor Mendel’s Pro-Botanist

I made this for a “one week, one person, one game” competition with the assigned theme “a game your mother would play”. I won, but only because I was the only person who could think of and create an entry. My girlfriend’s mother really liked it, though, so I guess that makes me a real winner of sorts.

Running the Game

Run GMPB2006.exe, and the game will automatically unzip to your temporary directory and run. So simple my mother could do it!

Objective

Make as much money as possible over the summer by growing a garden and selling the crops at the farmer’s market at the end of each month.

Gameplay

At the beginning of each month, you start with an empty garden. Every day, you may choose to either plant a crop or do nothing – you do either by selecting the action and clicking on the grid. Plants will grow, each in their own unique way, for the remainder of the month. At the end of the month, the crops are picked and sold at the market, increasing your score. Various bonuses can be collected by achieving different objectives. See if you can figure them all out! (or read the spoiler at the end)

Design Approach

I literally designed this game to be a game my mother would want to play, and plan to have her try it out after I finish. Thus, as I worked on the game, I had the following thoughts in mind:

  • My mom likes non-confrontational games. I could never really get her to play Sonic the Hedgehog with me, or any other game that had things that moved quickly. She’s not a big gamer, but she was hooked on a variant of same game for a while – it’s simple, fun, and doesn’t put you on the spot. You can take as long as you want to take your turn.
  • My mom likes to garden. Hence, I made a game about gardening. To add to the atmosphere, I decided to simply add ambient sound effects instead of music. I got my sound effects from www.naturesongs.com, where they appear to be free / not illegal to use in this application. All art was done by myself.
  • My mom doesn’t like complicated games. Like I said before, she’s really not a gamer at all. So, I made the game simple, perhaps a little bit too simple, but I think that is better than it being too complicated. With a win condition of simply beating your high score, the game isn’t overly tough; you’re playing against yourself, not a machine hell-bent on your destruction.

And thus, I present to you, Gregor Mendel’s Pro-Botanist 2006. Enjoy!

Spoiler:

Full Garden (+$50) – Fill up every square in the garden with something.
Berry Bonanza (+$50) – Sell only raspberries and strawberries.
Rabbit Food (+$50) – Sell only carrots and lettuce.
Weeds Only (+$100) – Sell only weeds. Heh.

4 Comments to Gregor Mendel’s Pro-Botanist

  1. cyberjacob's Gravatar cyberjacob
    January 11, 2010 at 5:38 am | Permalink

    I’m commenting on nothing, wOOt, BUG ALERT!!! 🙂 xD

  2. Jack's Gravatar Jack
    February 12, 2010 at 6:41 am | Permalink

    looks interesting, think i’m gonna dig it (so to speak)

  3. Heather's Gravatar Heather
    March 5, 2010 at 6:38 am | Permalink

    this stupid school wont let me play this gregor mendel game!!!!

  4. Josh's Gravatar Josh
    May 8, 2010 at 9:17 am | Permalink

    It was fun and all, but after the first game, it rained for 5 games straight… );