Today we would like to share with you our Update of Cardening, which we have been working on for the last few months.

4 months ago our team participated in the Spring 2D Jam. After a weekend of intense work, we submitted our card-based entry Cardening, and came in 2nd place. The great feedback we had received motivated us to keep working on the game.

These new card types add more depth to the gameplay thanks to their unique characteristics and new combination possibilities. For each type we are showing three typical examples here - inside the game you will discover many more!

Permanent

Permanent cards are not added back into your deck after a round is over. Instead they will stay in the exact spot where they have been placed until the end of the game. Strategic placement of these cards is essential!

They can also have varying special effects and reading their tooltips can be beneficial!

Tool

Each tool card has a specific effect! It is a good idea to hover over a card and read the tool-tip to find out what it does!

Pest

As you expand your garden, these little Pests may appear and hide in your draw pile! Once you draw a Pest card it is going to jump onto one of your Plant cards, which you then can’t harvest! Luckily there are ways to get rid of them. Matching a number of any card with a number of the Pest card will damage it!

If that is not enough, then you might want to look for a chemical weapon called the “Exodus”. Or you could just go on a rampage with your pickaxe.

To complete this list of card types, here are the two that already existed in the Jam version. We have extended them in terms of numbers and concepts as well:

Plant

Plant cards are your main source of income. After a plant has been sufficiently watered, it is automatically harvested and you earn money. The amount of money you earn for harvesting can be increased if you match the numbers of a plant card with the numbers on any other card.

Water

Mainly used to water your plant cards. But there are a few other cards that benefit from being watered - so with some smart combinations you can build decent water cycles!

There are now 5 different stages that you can unlock. Each of them has its own focus, and challenges your gardening talent in different ways.

Happy Cardening

This beginner stage contains a tutorial that explains the most important mechanics. The players learn the basics of Cardening here and unlocks further stages through their success.

Home Improvements

It is time to think in the long run! Place useful structures and decorations around your garden. While your plants come and go as you sow and harvest them, your structures stay there permanently! They are called Permanent cards for a reason!

Treasure Hunt

The shop seems to have run out of high value cards. But suspicious looking mounds of earth suggest that there is buried treasure in your garden! Who needs to buy cards when you can dig them up with a spade?

Invasion

The enemy is here! Bugs and snails are invading your garden to get a taste of your veggies! You must fight them off to get by!

Master Gardener

As a master gardener, you must be able to make the most out of a bad situation. Tend to subpar crops while you defend your garden against the ongoing invasion of pests! Just as you are about to lose everything you remember; There might still be buried treasure around here!

Be prepared to put your knowledge and skill to the test!

Cardening now offers a total of 55 cards - each of them with a unique, hand-drawn and hand-colored design. All of them have their own special characteristics and combining them with other cards opens up even more possibilities.

In the store you now have the possibility to re-roll the offers. The piggy bank also allows you to set aside some money for the next round.

We have invested a lot of effort and attention to detail into an improved game experience. Out of many, here is a selection of our favorites:

• Your Highscores and unlocks will be saved (and loaded again when you replay the game)
• Tooltips are showing explanations for the properties of each card (type, state and individual information)
• Balancing (the progression system of each stage, the types of cards in that stage and their prices - everything is carefully balanced according to the characteristics and needs)
• Improved card handling (dragging and dropping cards , including visual and audio feedback, feels just right now)
• Visual and audio feedback (highlighting of drop zones and affected zones assists players in planning their next action, transition and flow of cards communicates causalities, audio feedback for all kinds of gains, effects and losses)
• An end screen is showing a summary of the completed stage, the achieved score, the highscore and any new unlocks

You can play Cardening online or use the download link below to install the Windows version on your computer.

We really enjoyed crafting, creating and implementing the new cards, stages and concepts during the last months. And we hope that you have as much fun with our game as we do. And now we wish you...

Happy Cardening!