A neat cellular automata simulation. I especially like how seeds travel on water.

A few issues:

Water should even out horizontally a lot faster.
Right now it's possible to create a mountain of water, which looks a bit silly.

Turning a fully soaked ground tile into stone keeps the moisture level intact.
This means that the stone tile is blue, which is not normally possible, and a plant can grow on it as well.

Plants can grow through tiles above them.

Cacti can grow underwater as long as it resides on a stone.

Thanks for checking it out HuvaaKoodia! You're right, there are quite a few bugs with it. If I do a post-compo version I'll sort those out. :)

Somehow this game keep me busy for a descent time.

I liked the water physic, even if its a bit buggy when you add rock on wet dirt. I made some "fountains" with stairs used to transmit wetness on several ground.

Maybe some kind of goal and a bit more plant could be nice in a post-compo version. It is also not that clear what makes big and small plants.

this is a really nice simulation type thing, quite fun

Wow I liked everything in this game, nice work here ;)

Great work! This is a really fun ecosystem simulation. I would have liked tool tips for the buttons to help the learning curve. Although it was also fun experimenting with each type of button and just seeing what happens.

I had a good time making a little hanging garden in this. It's a simple game; cute and fun to explore. It got me to thinking about all the different directions a dev could take this kind of core mechanic, too.

You could make discrete plants and such into self-sustaining loops. Plants could be feeding each other or some critters, producing a balanced loop of water production and consumption, etc. They could be terraforming barren terrain too; some plants could take nutrients out of soil and make it barren/stone, while others die or enrich it. Perhaps you only have a limited number of seeds you can plant per type, and you need to keep the ecosystem stable to keep playing; new plants, critters, and tools could be given to the player over time, to expand their options, and create a sense of progression. This could move into strategy/resource management game territory with some kind of currency; maybe plants providing the player with currency to trade for new tools or seeds, or a quota of plants need to be grown before a season is up, etc.

This makes me want to try building a strategy game or RPG around cellular automata. :P

Awesome little simulator! Very impressive movement of water for a jam game. I enjoyed watching cactuses take over everything, and discovering how to grow water lillies. I tried to set up an irrigation system for the flowering plants that need water, but it didn't work out too well. The seed popping sound and rain sfx were a bit annoying. Great concept, would love to see this expanded.

Lot of fun playing with this simulation. Reminded me a lot of a game I used to play where different sand particles had different properties like things that burned and grew. A lot of potential to make extend on this in a similar way if you ever wanted. Great job!

Nice experiment ! i liked to try some different configurations and had fun with this little sandbox. Maybe the light factor could have be implemented, because plants quite like it :]
I had some crashes that ended games several times on the web build,and some little details are weird (collisions, snow?)but it's always fun to build a little world and watch it evolve.

Thank you everyone who played and rated, and especially if you've left a comment. Considering this isn't really a 'game' as such, it's done better than I had hoped. :)

I would like to polish this up and develop it further, but I tend to say that about every jam game, so maybe I will, maybe I won't. ;)

Solifuge, I had hoped to have creatures involved, I just ran out of time - I have quite a list of things that didn't get added! The idea of plants terraforming is really good though, I'll write that one down. I chose to go for a sandbox rather than progression, but that could certainly work.