I released my game


I released my game, Moon Garden Optimizer.  It’s a puzzle strategy game about growing a tiny garden on the moon while optimizing water usage.  It’s inspired by deckbuilders like Dominion, but it supports unlimited undo.

Screenshot of moon garden optimizer

You can play for free in browser on itch.

Most people are here because they like my writing, so I’ll mention that the game has writing!  As a reward for beating challenges, there’s philosophical dialogue between the robot protagonist and her human manager.  It’s fairly silly, but takes a bit of inspiration from modern AI.  For example, the human has unwarranted confidence in the robot’s expertise.

Comments

  1. flex says

    Good joss! (From a very old Apple II game.)

    When I get some time, I’ll give it a try.

  2. lochaber says

    Neat!

    Thanks for linking to it.
    I poked around a bit earlier today, mostly restarted the tutorial a couple times, and then gave the standard version a go or two.

    I’ll probably give it a couple more tries, maybe with the daily toolset thing.

    the statistics/graph bit is kinda a cool feature, and I don’t think something I’ve seen on similar(?) games previously.

  3. says

    I’ve played it a few times and it’s quite enjoyable. I think the undo function is VERY handy. Due to the timings, I often find that I’ve done something in the wrong order and wasted time. There’s a risk of decision paralysis at the beginning, so the ability to go back is helpful. Likewise, it’s difficult to figure the proper timing for transitioning between energy production and oxygen, but I guess that’s part of the challenge, so no worries there.

    It would be helpful to have some way of seeing your production from last turn. The quick pop-ups are a bit too quick, especially if I’m trying to keep track of several different plants and whether they’re doing what I think they’re doing (the ones that change production/consumption based on rows and columns). Maybe a mouse-over function for each individual plant with “Last turn produced: XYZ” would be good.

    Overall, better than a lot of the games that try to catch my attention and fail.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *