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1 Released 7th of March, Gardener: Master of Trees and Flowers is an early access sandbox botanical simulation game by solo developer Koksny.com.
Also known as Wojciech Górny, he has been working on the title for four years. With a keen interest in genetics, simulation, shading, and gardening, Gardener: Master of Trees and Flowers is very much a work-in-progress game that has a surprising purpose. Something that you will find out more about during the dev interview!
Grow & Flourish
With an active Discord where both gamers and Wojciech are constantly feeding ideas back and forth along with new updates, Gardener: Master of Trees and Flowers has been changing nearly every day that I have logged in to play.
Gameplay
The idea of this time-lapse game is to successfully grow a diverse garden full of various plants and flowers. There is much more to be added, such as ecosystems as well as a Japanese folklore-inspired storyline.
Starting at a sunny 7.07 am, you begin in a typical American-style residential picket-fenced wrap-around lawned garden. It comes complete with a weatherboarded house in the middle and a porch.
Cutting the grass is the first thing to do. Selecting from a radial toolbar housing traditional gardening methods, you choose the scythe and begin left-clicking the mouse to swipe at the ground. Meanwhile, the time of day rapidly counts through the minutes and hours.
Once the grass is cut short, you can then select a shovel and begin digging areas for planting. On the radial toolbar are plant species, and you drop your first seed into the ground. A quick water with the can (refillable around the back of the house) and then you magically conjure over it, by holding down the left mouse button, to make the plant grow. Annoyingly, like real gardening, there is a high chance of growing weeds as well. These can be removed with the scythe or by over-conjuring, however, your plant progress bar goes down. You also run the risk of clearing the plant that you have grown, so be careful!
As the sun sweeps over the top of you, shadows grow longer. While there is a little more time left in the day for some last-minute interactions, your work comes to a rapid end at 22:00.
Level Up
You begin the game at level 1, and for every plant you grow (including weeds), your progress bar, consisting of garden points (GP), increases, allowing you to reach the next level.
As your level progresses, you unlock new species of plants and other items. These help to increase the amount of GP you accumulate. Each level’s goal begins to get higher and higher. For example, Level 2 is 100K while Level 4 requires 1M points. The newer plant species yield a larger amount of XP, therefore, there is always something to be growing to add to your flourishing garden and help you along.
God Mode
Discovering new genes within your garden from grown plants unlocks random cards such as leaf and flower types. These cards can be used to make your own plant, flower, bush or tree in the plant creator, available at the main menu of the game. Fancy a different colour flower? The creator is for you. How about developing a herbicide-resistant fruit? To the creator, my friend! In fact, you are encouraged to make your own plants to have more efficient flora to deploy within your garden design.
Gardener: Master of Trees and Flowers is a lovely casual game. Koksny has explored the genetics of plants and provided them with unique characteristics to every single leaf of a plant. Your actions have an equal reaction from the plant, the same as they do today. Whether you decide to graft, prune or train a plant will affect how it grows and flourishes.
Just like in a game where the environment affects your character’s stats, the environment impacts how plants grow. Think of it like managing your plant’s health: light levels, water, dealing with pests, and even the tiny microbes and fungi around them all play a role. Plus, essential nutrients like Nitrogen (N), Phosphorus (P), Potassium (K), Calcium (Ca), Iron (Fe), and Magnesium (Mg) are like the power-ups your plant needs to level up and thrive. I must say I am really looking forward to seeing how Gardener: Master of Trees and Flowers matures through its early access.
Dev Chat
JP: What was your first gaming machine?
WG: My first gaming machine was a bootleg NES. I had an Amiga 500 around the same time, but didn’t have many games on it, since it was difficult to get software back then.
JP: What was your favourite game growing up and why?
WG: I’ve probably spent most of my time playing Pokémon on GameBoy, maybe the Command & Conquer series on PC when I was a bit older, with Creatures 2 and 3 between.
JP: Where has your inspiration come from to make a gardening simulator game?
WG: I wasn’t really planning on making a gardening simulation game. I was working on Creatura, and the absolute majority of bugs and performance issues were caused by plants, so I’ve decided to start from scratch, and make a dedicated plant simulation/rendering engine. Gardener as a game was a fairly incidental side-effect, intended just to see how far and fast the new plant engine can go.
Genetics
JP: Previous gardening games that I have played before have not focused very much on the genetic side. That must have been quite hard to implement? Do you have a keen interest in the science side of plants?
WG: I’ve been working on genetics simulations since 2016, so in reality that was probably the most straightforward part of the game to implement, as I’ve iterated it largely on Creatura design and code. I don’t think it’s possible to simulate any reasonably in-depth ecosystem without genetics as foundation, and it’s just necessary if the game has to be based in reality. I do enjoy using science or research as a basis for gameplay mechanics – on one hand it makes them much easier to design by just following Wikipedia, on other – it’s often an interesting challenge how to implement and simplify them for the game, while still sticking to real data.
JP: Where has your love of Japanese folklore stemmed from?
WG: A lot of Japanese folklore focuses on nature and balance, core aspects of gardening, making Gardener an appropriate place to introduce characters such as Yamabiko. I always loved the concept of tree spirits, giving the nature a bit of mischievous ‘edge’ – there is a certain aura to centuries old trees, just as there is a certain grief when harvesting seasonal crops, and Japanese culture just captures very well that mundane but respectful coexistence with environment, be it in art of Bonsai or legend of Kodama.
Full Release?
JP: While I appreciate you are currently in early access and slowly introducing new features to play with, when would you like to have the full version released by?
WG: Gardener will be out of Early Access before the end of 2025. The game has been in development for almost 4 years, and almost all features are implemented to some degree, with many ready as soon as the assets and UI elements are prepared. With the incoming 0.4 Ecosystems update, we’re still missing in-game decorations, utilities, more maps and guiding paws (and story) of Kodama & Yamabiko, but the core of the game has now already almost molded into what it will be at 1.0 release.
Graphics & Audio
The graphics in Gardener: Master of Trees and Flowers are very pleasing on the eye. With a high level of attention to detail when it comes to not only the beauty of each plant, but also their structure. With over 10²⁸ million possible plant species to try and discover and design as well as watch grow, the engine that Koksny has developed is really pushed to its limits.
When it comes to sound and music, nature and cheerful melodies accompany your soothing gardening sessions. You can’t hear any neighbours arguing or the dogs next door woofing. It is lovely and chill!
Longevity
As Gardener: Master of Trees and Flowers evolves, there will be much more to do. For now, it’s all about getting from level 1 to level 10. I look forward to trying out more of my own plant creations and the Japanese folklore-inspired story.
Final Thoughts
Gardener: Master of Trees and Flowers is a niche botanical sandbox simulation game that I found quite intriguing to play. Time certainly flies while you are having fun. It is rewarding to see your garden creations spring to life. The time-lapse allows you to accomplish much more growth and experiment with all manner of different techniques and genetics. I can’t wait to see what Koksny adds next.
Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.
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