Brief Description
- Simulation videogame of bonsais growth and care
- Everyone with Android in their smartphone or tablet can play it
- Will be free to download in Google Play Store and without advertisings
- Internationalization. 8 languages on focus: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, Italian and French
- Highly educational and funny
- Google Game Services integration. There will be score(oxygen) rankings, achievements system, savegames on the cloud and more
- Not necessary to be connected to internet to play
Note: go straight to the gallery to see high quality original screenshots of the game, the ones here are reduced in size for aesthetic purpose.
Gameplay. Where do resides the fun and challenge? The defiance of learn
Shouhin Bonsai dare you to deal with the continuos growth of up to 3 bonsais. You will have to take care of them in this specific aspects: solar energy absorved, hydration, substrate mineralization, substrate distribution, pruning, defensive fertilization and combative fertilization.
Time in game is a bit accelerated compared to our time, therefore you will experiment a bit quickler growing of bonsai items(leaves, branchs, trunk, flowers, fruits) than the ones in real life. This was subtly adapted to not experience boredom. Since this is a simulation as closer that it can to the real world, I don't want to accelerate the in-game time more than it is now.
To experiment quickler the behaviour of the bonsais versus the year seassons, SB implements 3 weeks for a seasson, so a year in-game are 3 months of our-daily life.
The user will have to take a look into the game daily, at least once, to keep their plants healthy. I never thought to make the player a slave of the game, I always thought about everyone, since the one who checks his smartphones once daily, while traveling back from their jobs, to people which have more time to be connected. There will be an option for those who want to take vacations of the technology: enabling an specific in-game action you'll freeze your progress. Then when you want to come back to play again you revert the action, with no loss(and not growth of course) at all.
Internet free. Although Google Game Service will be integrated to SB(so requires login to their server), I'm aimed to make the gamer free to play in everywhere, without need of internet connection.
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Three kind of bonsais, three bonsai kinds
Cypress, the bonsai of bonsais is a must. Cypress is a shouhaku bonsai, which means a conifer one. I also wanted to include another variety of trees, that's why we will have a Maple, representing zakki bonsais, broadleaf one; and a Jasmine, representing hanamono bonsais, floral.
Some words about the abstraction. A closer look
To write the simulation of a real world thing one must study it, deeply. Then one have to define a level of abstraction for the simulation, how deeply you want to show the rabbit hole, this is necessary to not fall into madness. The deepness reached contents me, it goes pretty far.
Sickness
Each bonsai element(branches, leaves, male flowers, female flowers, fruits) can get sick. There are currently eight simulated diseases. The progress of a bonsai is linked to its health.
Natural interpretation of bonsai growing
The bonsai growth has randomness and control. Example: will never exist fruits if first there aren't male and female flowers.
Mineralization reduced over time
It is known that one of the components of the photosynthesis factory are the minerals within the substrate. Over time these minerals get depleted due to the consumption made by the plant. At some point, photosynthesis production is relatively low due to the above, good moment to change the substrate, but note... it's good if it's spring, while in another seasson bonsai can be damaged.
Irrigation power
Be cautious with the irrigation with full watering can! The power with which the water comes out of the watering can, can mess up the distribution of the substrate and cause stress on the plant, resulting in a reduction in the production of photosynthesis. Watering should be at low pressure and well distributed.
UV radiation
Shouhin Bonsai also simulates the variation in solar UV radiation. There are days that's more severe than others, that determines how much you could expose the bonsai in the sun without causing burns. Also note that different seassons means different solar energy power, and of course, due to this, plant dehydrated quickler in the summer than in the winter.
Preventive fertilization
Exist artificial and organic preventive fertilizers provisions, the latter being more efficient but more complicated to get! Everything has a cost(gold) in the game and you must learn to manage it. The only way to get gold is completing achievements or participating in the annual local and international exhibitions.
Annual exhibitions
Like all bonsai lover knows, there are bonsai exhibitions, and bonsai beauty and care contests around the world. Shouhin Bonsai is no exception. It has two annual(in-game) exhibitions, one local and one international. At the end of the exhibition, the user gets a place in the competition, which equals a certain amount of gold. That gold will serve to maintain your bonsais healthy and therefore allow a faster growth.
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Updates...
Want to know more about the game? Reference to the
Updates side of the website, there you'll find some more videos, screenshots and more. This is the last updates:
How does it feels the interaction with the screen?
You can see the big picture of your bonsai and each items closely. By doing that you will be able to detect a sick component. If you're skilled in detecting when the plants in your garden are sick you'll do the same here. Each item varies its colors proving that is sick, if it doesn't receive at least some sunlight will head discoloration. Not only its color varies, also in size and form, since they can wilt. By zooming in, you can also detect if a branch is bleeding sap due to a pruning, sometimes will get damaged.
A bit of the defensive fertilization side of the application
Basically the defensive fertilization is about to have in-game gold to get artificial fertilizers or raw materials to construct organic fertilizers. As you know if you read, the gold is obtained in the annuals exhibitions, where you'll get a ranking position based in the health of your bonsai, beauty and amount of bonsai items(fruits gives more points, balance between male and female flowers give some anothers, and also the leaves). Artificial fertilizers are not so good as the organic ones, they cover few defense, are cheaper and works for a large amount of days. On the other hand organic fertilizers expires in a week, they cover more defense(up to 75%) and constructing them is expensive. This way the game push you to be rather exposed to plagues at the beggining, and slowly, by getting gold in exhibitions you'll construct a better wall for plagues.
Another items are being created, which will influence the defense againts plagues. They can be coupled with any of your bonsais, one item for one bonsai. This items can be obtained completing achievements. I'll give some randomness in the obtaining of these objects, so we can enjoy variety and fun. Some of them will only help you for a specific kind of plague, i.e.: [+20% protection againts Small Mealybugs]. To note, there are 6 kinds of plagues: Acarus, Red Spider Mites, Small Mealybugs, Big Mealybugs, White Flies and Plant-louse.
About the developer
Shouhin Bonsai is developed by JorobusLab, a one person entrepreneurship founded in 2012. Damián(aka IgorJorobus) has developed several proffesional administrative applications for small and medium enterprises to end doing videogames, his true vocation. Be free to check out his portfolio on JorobusLab website.
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Game development progress
At the beginning of this campaign SB was on 75% of progress. Currently it is 85%.
TODO's and WIP's
Order in here doesn't matter
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Internal achievement system
- Store system(ie: where you can purchase the fertilizers with gold)
- Implementation of Maple and Jasmine
- In winter plants go into the "greenhouse", I must design those graphics
- Design of several items to get via achievements, included backgrounds
- Connect the game with Google Game Services
- Outsource translations
- In-game tutorial
- Some SFX left
- Some music left
Don't worry about how to get the in-game items. After your support, give me 1~2 days to personally contact you and I'll show you how we can easily achieve this.
About the t-shirt and stickers: I'm working on that, will take some days to show you the models, what I can ensure is that will be of high quality and can be sent to anywhere in the world.
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Another ways of support Shouhin Bonsai
Commenting about the game in the
comments section will help a lot, comment whatever you want about the game, say if it likes you or say what would you change or add from it. Also you can ask something about the game, I'm going to answer you shortly.
I'll ask you to share this website by clicking on the links at the left of the page, by Facebook, Twitter or Google+.
Finally you can follow us on some of this social websites:
Below is the official website of JorobusLab but since I can't embrace all the fields of information publishing because of time(have to finish the game) I'll use this as main place for Shouhin Bonsai related things(be aware to check this site between 2 days). Then when campaign gets done, I'm going to emigrate all the information to my website and keep writing there. I compromise myself to post about a topic each 2 days.
