Garden Express

Garden Express is a real-time management & spatial strategy placement puzzle game. Players must juggle customer requests, monument placements, and board expansions in real time to keep the thriving business of the garden.

The game takes place on a grid filled with monuments and every few seconds a new customer will arrive with certain locations they wish to visit. Monuments have a radius of influence, allowing players to strategize and prioritize certain customers.

Characteristics:

1. Stochasticity: Non-Deterministic, as customers are randomly assigned monuments to visit, and the position of monuments at the start of the game are also random.

2. Observability: Perfect Information, you can see all details on where the monuments are, what the customers desires are, and how much time you have left.

3. Time-Granularity: Real-Time, the player must move the customers around in real time and satisfy their desires before they run out of patience.

4. Length of Playtime: Short Sessions, lasting around a couple minutes, or however long the player can keep all customers satisfied. When the game is over, the player has the option to try again.

5. Systems: Conditional, all customers have patience, during this time they must visit each of their desired monuments. If they are unable to visit all of their desired monuments, then the game is over.

6. Single vs Multiplayer: Single player

7. Heuristics: Try to place customers where the radius of influence overlaps, prioritize these placements for customers who wish to see multiple monuments. Try to place customers who are running out of patience in a double monument ( same monument section to speed up their progress -- only works if that monument has not had any progress ). Try to place customers close to their next monument to reduce the time spent on moving customers. Try to focus on customers running out of patience.

8. Depth vs Entropy: Moderate depth, with an emphasis on time management.

9. Dexterity vs Strategy: Focus on both, as time goes on the dexterity and multi-tasking requirement increases.

How to Play

Bring the customers to their desired monuments. Hover to see what they're interested in, and then click and drag them to their desired location. If they run out patience, the game is over!

Game Structure

The game begins at a slow pace to allow players to get an idea of monument locations, and as the game progresses, the number of customers coming in increases.