ROOTBOUND
A free browser game from Core Systems Asset Factory. Genre: Simulation. Free.
ROOTBOUND is a free browser game, free to play in the browser.
ROOTBOUND is a free browser garden simulation with 12 real plant species, where every plant that thrives shades, drains and sours the ground around it. The bed you laid out perfectly stops working because it worked, and the shovel is the only answer: moving a plant costs it real health. How it plays Every square holds four hidden values: light, moisture, soil pH and feed.
A plant is scored on its worst one, so perfect light in bone dry soil is a dying plant, and the game names the value that is wrong. Dig rough ground into beds. Digging is free; ground that suits the plant is the scarce thing. Look through overlays that paint light, water, soil and feed across the garden. Move what the shade has caught. Lifting costs health by size, and the first shovel cannot lift a mature birch.
Amend a square for good with compost, grit, lime or leafmould. Three plants cannot live in open ground, and only the sunflower, rhubarb and birch make shade. You start in full sun, grow the canopy the shade lovers need, then move everything that cannot live under it. Each species flowers in one season, and its first flower presses it into the herbarium for good. Twelve pressed specimens ends the game.
AI disclosure, as the store page states it: AI Assisted, Code, Graphics, Text
Free · Get it on itch.io. Files, screenshots and the full description are on the store page.