“The Grand Plant Hotel” by Mehmet Dereli, Julius Krüger, Felix Kosian, Lars Eble, Ines Hilz & Irox Games (Lars Grevsmühl & Marcel Zurawka).
“It is your job to look after the many different plants of the local residents. Try to figure out what each individual type of plant needs and keep them happy and build a relationship with their owners.”
The theme of the forty-sixth edition of the Ludum Dare was “Keep it alive”, and what would be better than a gardening game as a submission? “The Grand Plant Hotel” is an excellent and highly polished representative of the genre, but in addition to the common gameplay elements (like watering flowers and maybe giving them some fertilizer) it also features a neat puzzle design.
Each day, up to four customers will give you one of their plants, asking you to take care of them. Overall sixteen different kinds of plants will find their way to you, if you are persistent enough to fulfill the special needs of each single one. Not all are unlocked right from the beginning, as you have to earn the trust of your customers. If you keep their flowers happy, they might bring you their even more loved ones.
However, before you can handle them appropriately, you have to figure out the mentioned needs to begin with. There is no manual that will explain to you if a pineapple plant prefers direct or dimmed light or if it actually grows best in the shadows. No one will tell you if the shrooms need a lot of manure or just a little bit. Also, nobody told you if cannabis plants evolve better with wet or dry soil. That is all for you to find out with the good, old trial-and-error technique and some deduction skills. [PLAY]
