Windowsill flourish

How to play Windowsill flourish

You get a box with six empty pockets of soil on a sunny windowsill. Tap an empty pocket to open the seed packet and plant one of twelve kinds: tomato, sunflower, mint, chilli, strawberry, cactus, pea, radish, lavender, marigold, basil or a mystery seed. Tap a plant to water it, or pick up the watering can and tap plants to water them straight away. The drops on the box show how much water each plant still wants today. Then come back tomorrow. Plants grow one stage a night in real time, from sprout to leaves, bud, flower and finally ready to pick, as long as they got what they needed. Once a day you also get one portion of plant food: give it to a watered plant and it grows a stage on the spot, although the last step to ready to pick always waits for the night. Pick ripe plants to fill your jar, and start a fresh box whenever you like; the jar keeps everything. The weather changes every day and it matters: a hot day needs two waterings, a rainy day none, and a cold snap means shutting the window.

Tips

• Every kind has its own quirk. Mint spreads into empty pockets next door, the sunflower turns to follow the sun across your day and the cactus sulks if you water it on a day that is not hot
• The chilli only grows with the window open, unless it is cold out
• Plant food covers one plant a day, so spend it on the one you most want to see grow. Feed a seed on the day you plant it and it sprouts straight away
• A missed day leaves a plant thirsty and droopy, never dead. Give it what it needs and it perks up the next day
• A snail turns up now and then and loves strawberries. Tap it to shoo it off, or plant a marigold to keep snails away
• A bee in the window adds one extra to the next pick of every plant in flower. Lavender brings one every day it flowers
• The mystery seed shows what it is once it buds, and its flowers only open after dark

About Windowsill flourish

Windowsill flourish is a slow toy: no timer, no score to beat and nothing that can be lost for good. It runs on the real calendar, so the box changes once a day and rewards a quick visit more than a long session. Every plant, stage, pot and piece of weather is drawn in code in a warm flat style made for this game, and the weather is the same for everyone on a given day. Growing food and flowers on a window ledge is an old city habit. Pliny the Elder wrote in the first century that the poorer people of Rome kept little gardens in their windows, giving themselves a daily view of the countryside in the middle of the city. Sounds are synthesised on the spot and start switched off.

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