Gardening for Beginners

About the game

You bought the house in January, and now, in April, the snow is finally gone and you can see the garden properly for the first time. It is not that bad: a flower bed, a patch for vegetables, a small fish pond, a lawn and an old shed. You have a to-do list of easy jobs to get you started and a very positive attitude.

The list does not stay short for long. Every chore you finish seems to bring a new problem with it, and the top of the screen keeps track of how your feelings about gardening are developing as the day goes on.

Gardening for Beginners is a small comedy set in a single garden, written quickly for a speed competition and polished afterwards. It is a good first text adventure: there is only one place to explore, and the to-do list always tells you what is left.

Playing it here

Click Play now and the story starts in the player. Type a command after the > prompt and press Enter. The game understands short English sentences, such as read the list or take the rake. There are no compass directions here: you are either in the garden or in the shed.

Commands

Command	What it does
`read list`	see the to-do list and what is already done
`in` / `out`	go into the shed and back out to the garden
`look` (`l`)	describe the garden again
`examine` (`x`) something	look closer
`inventory` (`i`)	list what you are carrying
`weed`, `plant`, `water` something	the basic gardening chores
`take`, `put` ... `in`, `pour` ... `on`	the usual ways to handle things
`license`	the licence text
`save` / `restore`	keep your progress in this browser and load it back

A few things worth knowing

Check the list often. New jobs are added to it as things go wrong, so it is the best guide to what to do next.

Look in the shed. Most of what you need for the later chores is in there.

Watch the status bar. It is the game's way of telling you how the day is going, and it is half of the joke.

Credits and licence

Gardening for Beginners was written by Juhana Leinonen for the 2008 Spring Speed IF and first played in a ClubFloyd session; the release played here is the second, from April 2008. It is free software under the author's own licence, which allows copying and even selling the game as long as its source code is available alongside it. The full source code of this release is hosted here and linked from this page, together with the licence text, which you can also read in the game by typing license. The cover art is in the public domain.