Interesting little concept! Nice job :)

I would have preferred if there was a "goal".

For example a 'target flower' that you were trying to reach, or simply some 'sale value' attached to each flower, which would encourage breeding to find the most valuable flower(s).

Interesting game ! I feel like it miss some kind of objective somehow. Right now it is a sandbox of trying out different combination without really knowing if you did see everything or not, as the combined plant is random so we could miss out a new plant without knowing.

Maybe you could add a sort of encyclopedia of what stem / flower / leaf has been discovered ? That way the player could try to find out every available parts and from that he can freely try to make his own ultimate plant ! :sunflower:

Overall good job on this entry ! :tada:

@gcake Thank you very much.
The plan was to have an encyclopedia of all "genes" to be auto-populated when the player found one, so they could see what they have found and how many they have left to find.
I was also going to implement something of an objective and an in-game store (with some additional items, unlockable slots etc.) similar to what @sirlich above suggested.

But I ran out of time for any of that.

*sigh* genetics - we had the same idea, but to a lesser degree. I like the "simplicity" of the game combined with a very complex theory behind it.

@xparker Yeah, quite different approaches. I wanted something closer to yours, with more advanced chromosomes, but I was late for the Compo and decided to simplify it so I could get the rest of it done.
It's basically just the Smart Rockets mutation algorithm, but the player selects the breeding pair instead of randomised pairs.

This is a neat idea to teach people about genetics.

@mika314 I had a brief idea of adding a "book" to show what types of genes a player has discovered, but I ran out of time. One section of the book would allow the player to add both parent flowers and get a Punnet Square showing all possible combinations and the likelihood of getting a particular combination, like we learn in biology class.

Great idea! It's great to use two flowers to make a bunch of flowers, it would be even better to have a target or icon, I love the sound effects of the destruction you did, looking forward to future updates!