Hi DTube! This is the third episode of Obscurata, which is a series of videos highlighting old, obscure, rare, or otherwise underapreciated free software games.
This episode focuses on Cultivation, which is a somewhat unusual gardening simulation game in which you play as blob-like creature who inhabits a small island with a group of its kind. You must plant seeds and water them in the hopes of bringing in a harvest. Once you actually get some fruits you can choose to either eat them to produce more seeds or feed them to your compatriots. Eventually you can breed with the others to continue on your genetic line. Watch out though, because if you make the others unhappy, they might poison the ground, which can make it unfit for harvest and even lead to total environmental collapse. The game is free software, with source code and all assets released completely into the public domain.
Cultivation is perhaps less obscure than my previous Obscurata highlights, but it is getting on in years and is deserving of some new attention! Cultivation was created by Jason Rohrer between 2006 and 2007, and was even a finalist in the ill-fated 2007 Slamdance Guerrilla Games Festival. The controversy surrounding that particular festival often overshadows the entrants themselves, and this game is no exception. Cultivation, however, stands on its own merits, and has something meaningful to say. Rohrer wrote an essay about the game that I mention in the video. Give it a read! The developer himself is an interesting character, and (despite what I mistakenly say in the video) is still making games. Check out his Wikipedia page
for some more info.
This game can be downloaded from its Sourceforge homepage here: http://cultivation.sourceforge.net
This video is licensed under the CC-BY-SA 4.0 license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
