A Video Game for Gardeners?
Check out this video for Cultivation, a video game by Jason Rohrer. Described on YouTube as a game that "explores the
social interactions within a gardening community. You lead one family
of gardeners, starting with a single individual, and wise choices can
keep your genetic line from extinction. While breeding plants, eating,
and mating, your actions impact your neighbors, and the social balance
sways between conflict and compromise."
You can read more about the game here and download it here. (We have not attempted this; you’re entirely on your own.)
Or there’s a game called Plant Tycoon that’s about cross-breeding plants to solve a genetic puzzle. They, too, have a YouTube video. The music drove me crazy, but here it is:
And it turns out that Microsoft has an Xbox game called Viva Pinata. Get a taste of it here:
Any gamers out there? What do you think? Garden video games? Waste of time or wholesome entertainment for the whole family and brilliant way to goof off at work?
Posted by Amy Stewart on October 1, 2007 at 5:37 am, in the category I Don't Have a Garden, but I Watch One on TV.
Now I know what to do while the contractors install a $40,000 bomb-proof garden in my backyard.
Ok, two words…sensory overload! I’d rather be outside in the garden!
The only game I ever played was “Myst,” and it was awesome; but I agree with layanee. Heading to the garden now to pull out creeping charlie by hand.
Correction: The creeping charlie is in the LAWN, of course, not my lovely garden beds!
I’m with Layanee and Marte – there is nothing like the smells, textures, colours, shapes and vitality of the real garden. It seems from the number of video games on the market, that too many people and kids live in a crudely coloured and shaped, two dimensional world rather than engaging physically and emotionally with the real world. Frankly I find it scary.
As my garden is a sodden mess under weeping skies, yes the monsoon season has come to Revelstoke and the high peaks are freshly snow-covered, I will go and get my hands muddy in the pottery studio.
You can find games for *anything*.
My kids have one called Harvest Moon that’s pretty good. It actually taught them that sowing seed and caring for plants to maturity isn’t all that easy – especially when Ma Nature doesn’t always cooperate.
It seems from the number of video games on the market, that too many people and kids live in a crudely coloured and shaped, two dimensional world rather than engaging physically and emotionally with the real world. Frankly I find it scary.
Any gamers out there? What do you think? Garden video games? Waste of time or wholesome entertainment for the whole family and brilliant way to goof off at work?