Backyard Florist

by Kenneth Bugeja

Story

While walking in your neighbourhood, you find a small plastic bag on the pavement. You decide to pick it up and look into it. To your surprise you find a handful of sunflower seeds. At first, you toss them back on the pavement and continue walking, but then, old memories start to come to your mind, and you remember one of you childhood dreams: Become a renowned florist!

You go back, pick the bag with the seeds and return to your house where you plant the sunflower seeds in your backyard garden....

Gameplay

You're just getting started in the flower industry, with all the challenges:

• Different varieties of flowers
• Water plants to grow. 
• Give them fertiliser, to grow faster
• Should plants remain without water for a long period, they will start to wither and die.
• Buy seeds and bulbs to increase the variety of flowers and output
• Keep the seeds/bulbs of flowers or cut and sell them for a profit
• Keep an eye on your inventory!
• Plants will die should they remain fully grown for too long 

Screenshots and Guidelines

Main Menu

GUI

1. Growth speed: defines the growth rate of the plants in the backyard

2. In-game menu: in-game menu provides the functions to carry on the various    (water, fertilise, cut, collect, sow and buy)

3. Move camera: use the arrow keys to move the camera around the backyard. 

4. Current Action: shows the current selected tool/operation. This includes cut, collect, water, fertilise, sow, pause, etc.. based on the actions selected from the in-game menu.

5. Funds and notifications: Shows the current funds available to purchase new seeds. This areas include also any notifications (such as areas requiring water, additions/deduction of funds, additions/deductions of seeds)

Tools

Water: This tool works at section level, and will provide water to the plants to grow. The lower the amount of water in the soil, the slower the plants will grow. If a section remains without water for a certain period of time, the flowers will wither, turn brown and die. A notification is shown in the bottom right area when a section requires water.

Fertilise: Same as water, this tool works at section level. Fertilising the area increases the speed the plants will grow. 

Cut: This tool works at flower-level, and will cut plants and automatically sell them for an amount. Seeds can be collected for plants which have grown more than 80% (the tool will highlight the plant as red if below 80%, and green if above).

Collect: Similarly to the Cut", this tool works at flower-level, and collect the seed from the flower and place them in your stock of seeds, so that they can be sow later on. Seeds can be collected for plants which have grown more than 80% (the tool will highlight the plant as red if below 80%, and green if above).

Stock

In the stock section, you will find a snapshot of the number of seeds & bulbs currently available for each type of flower. Apart from the snapshots, this menu has 2 main functions:

• Select the seeds/bulbs to seed, and sow them in soil. 
• If the player has enough funds, it provides the ability to buy seeds/bulbs at the listed price