Learning and Research Board

The goal is not to collect features. For every reference, identify how it creates desire, communicates risk, and lets the player recover.

Use this five-question note after each session:

1. What information is known before committing to risk?
2. Is the player making a decision, or only receiving randomness?
3. What is lost on failure?
4. How long does recovery take?
5. Does the reward change later play, or only increase a number?

Priority A: Before Competition Implementation

• RHS judging overview — Read the categories and criteria for gardens and floral exhibits. Extract 4–6 terms that can become understandable game scores: condition, brief, impact, difficulty, plant health, presentation.

https://www.rhs.org.uk/shows-events/exhibit-at-a-show/judging-at-rhs-shows

• American Rose Society container-grown judging — Read the container-grown section. Decide which real criteria are fun and which would become maintenance clutter.

https://rose.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/2024-Horticulture-Judging-Guidelines.pdf

• Observe one real judging ceremony or walkthrough — Watch an RHS judging video or flower-show walkthrough. Note how suspense, expertise, and medals are presented to non-experts.

• Define acceptable loss — Write three examples each of a satisfying event failure and an unacceptable event failure. Include money, time, flowers, seeds, and information.

• Rank the two desired peaks — Describe the ideal 10-second experience of cultivation success and the ideal 10-second experience of selling out. They may both exist, but one must lead into the other.

Priority B: Risk, Debt, and Shop Research

• Potionomics — Study how debt, competition, preparation, and negotiation create pressure. Record when the pressure feels motivating and when it feels exhausting. Watching a focused playthrough is enough if buying is not useful.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1874490/Potionomics/

• Recettear — Study debt deadlines, sourcing, pricing, customer reactions, and what failure means. Pay special attention to whether recovery creates a new strategy or only repeats lost work.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/70400/Recettear_An_Item_Shops_Tale__Tale/

• Luck be a Landlord — Study bounded gambling: visible deadlines, build choices before a roll, readable combinations, and how losses lead into another attempt.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1404850/Luck_be_a_Landlord/

• Shop failure model — Sketch what happens when the roadside stand, market stall, and leased shop each fail. Protect the greenhouse and basic seeds in every version.

• Offline debt rule — Compare active-cycle interest, real-time interest, and fixed installment schedules. Explain which one respects idle players.
• One-worker policy paper test — Give a fictional assistant six flowers, one ready order, one rare specimen, and limited cash. Using only harvest priority, minimum stock, protected items, and cash reserve, verify that the assistant behaves predictably without solving the whole game.
• Automation responsibility audit — For watering, fertilizing, treatment, harvesting, ordering, selling, and replanting, label each action as machine, employee, or player responsibility. Reject duplicate upgrades that perform the same job with different flavor text.

Priority C: Plant Knowledge and Tone

• Butterfly orchid lifecycle — With an experienced grower or an authoritative horticultural source, identify 6-8 visually distinct stages from establishment through flower spike and bloom. Record what is actually observable without uprooting the plant.
• Pixel growth-stage study — Compare three pixel-art farming games. Capture how many frames each plant uses, which silhouette changes communicate growth, and what remains readable at phone size.
• One-loop music exercise — Enter the two theme phrases in MuseScore, GarageBand, or BeepBox. Test 4/4 and 6/8, then note which version feels like waiting for growth rather than completing office work.

• Study one plant with the creator's partner — Follow a real plant from seed or cutting through one visible change. Record what she checks, what surprises her, and which action feels caring rather than technical.

• Strange Horticulture — Study how plant knowledge, customers, labels, and a physical-feeling interface make information pleasurable. Do not copy its occult story; focus on information UX.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1574580/Strange_Horticulture/

• A Dark Room — Revisit the first 30 minutes. Record exactly when the interface reveals a new system and what desire makes the player engage with it.

https://github.com/doublespeakgames/adarkroom

• Kittens Game — Observe how old resources remain relevant when new systems arrive, and where the interface becomes too dense for a new player.

https://kittensgame.com/web/

• Rusty's Retirement — Observe when automation arrives, what the player still controls, and how the game remains readable while running in the background.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2666510/Rustys_Retirement/

Priority D: Future Floral Arrangement

• Find three spatial inventory or tile-placement games whose placement is satisfying in under ten seconds.
• For each, separate spatial strategy from visual decoration.
• Prototype on paper: place common flowers as volume, rare flowers as accents, and foliage as connectors.
• Decide whether arrangement quality should come from adjacency rules, silhouettes, color harmony, customer briefs, or a small combination.
• Reject any version that requires frequent rotation, pixel-perfect placement, or inventory housekeeping without meaningful choices.

Priority E: Plant Health and Rival Competition

• Follow one real symptom over time — With the creator's partner, photograph one affected plant across several days and record leaf position, spot shape, spread, watering, weather, and what treatment was attempted. Consult an authoritative horticultural or university extension source before assigning a disease name.
• Plant Tycoon — Study how breeding, pests, health, treatment, and slow discovery feed one another. Record which health systems create curiosity and which become repetitive chores.
• Disease-loop paper prototype — Test one path using cards: visible symptom -> two possible causes -> one investigation -> targeted treatment -> permanent resistance note. Reject versions where the correct answer is only random.
• Enhanced-seed vocabulary — Compare selective breeding, researched traits, and fictional gene modification. Decide which framing matches the garden's tone and how a player reads resistance without opening a genetics spreadsheet.
• Rival match without sabotage — Draw two candidate pots with visible progress and one shared judging brief. Test whether comparison alone creates enough tension.
• Bounded sabotage paper test — Give both sides three visible attack cards and three visible counters. Every attack must be telegraphed, event-only, and recoverable. Record whether the result feels funny, strategic, mean, or merely busy.
• Safety boundary — Keep pesticides and fertilizers as abstract or fictional game items unless text has been checked against an authoritative real-world source. Do not turn game recipes into real application instructions.

Priority F: Lineage and Progressive Complexity

• Progression-model comparison — Compare how Pokémon separates experience, individual differences, inheritance, and competitive titles. Identify which parts create attachment and which parts become hidden-number homework.
• Three-generation paper lineage — Raise one fictional plant family through three generations using only two traits, one title, and one tradeoff. Test whether each generation feels distinct without opening a detailed genetics panel.
• No universal champion test — Write three competition briefs that reward incompatible strengths. Confirm that no single lineage is the obvious best choice for all three.
• Automation exit audit — List every repeated greenhouse action and name its eventual batch action, device, employee, or persistent policy. Any action without an exit ramp blocks the next complexity layer.
• Progressive-disclosure replay — Revisit the first 30 minutes of A Dark Room and one mature idle-game save. Record what disappears, compresses, or becomes summarized when the next system arrives.
• Lineage language test — Compare 等级种子, 功勋种子, 冠军谱系, and a player-named family. Ask which wording implies training, inheritance, prestige, or confusing magic.

Discussion Template

When bringing research back into the jam, use:

Reference:
Moment observed:
What I felt:
Mechanism causing it:
What might transfer:
What should not transfer:
Question for our prototype: