First: this is an educational game that teaches the basics of genetics and plant breeding (dominant/recessive genes); a novel twist on Gregor Mendel's pea plant experiments (who makes an appearance).

Pros: Unlike most children's games, it's gentle and not flashy; there's no hurry to speed through everything, and you really want to double check everything before it goes through (fortunately, the glossary to check scientific terminology is readily available).

Soft pastel colours and a unique art style remind me of children's books of my parents' childhood. A lot of good memories are evoked in this game: the dress style of the characters is a fantastical blend of classical 18th century stiff frocks to a 1930s flapper style, the music is scratchy like an old record and hovers just at the edge of your perception. And I really appreciate well-written characters, subtle storytelling and good voice work: every character was charming and unique to me, and helping them out advanced their one-sided story a little further.

Cons: The game is unforgiving if you burn all your money buying plants instead of breeding them, accepting orders you don't have the energy or money to fulfill, or buying upgrades too early in the game. The 'tutorial' day feels tedious, but it takes two minutes to speed-click through everything. It's also extremely short: a skilled gamer can chew this up in an hour, but the quick end (and super-low price - I bought this at 4 CAD) prevents the game from feeling tedious and worth the money.

Also, I'd shoot the marketer who said "crazy" was a good descriptor for this game.

* Edited after completing the game.

Crazy Plant Shop actually reminds me a little of Cook Serve Delicious in that "just one more day" sort of addictive way, except it's about efficiency rather than speed. The key is trying to offer your customers the most combinations of plants using the least amount of breeding stock (pedestal space in your store) and mating attempts (energy). It's a fun little casual game that is challenging enough to keep you coming back for more, but not terribly difficult or stressful.

The game uses scientific concepts and terminology, and features the use of Punnett square diagrams to determine the traits of the plants you are breeding to fill customer requests. It would be a great game for kids taking biology classes for the first time, but I think it's still pretty entertaining even for adults who are familiar with the science involved.

The artwork is cute, and the plants are interesting and varied. The music's appropriate, but the voice acting is pretty cheesy and gets repetitive and grating after a while.

Not "crazy" but certainly adorable. The game centers around you being a plant shop owner and you breed plans to have certain traits and it's your basic genetics. It kind of took me back to those times where I had to fill in the squares with what traits would carry on and what not. It was really fun for the few hours I put into it, extremely cute with the nice graphics.

You carry out your day filling orders and breeding plants to make money to buy/unlock more plants and eventually the game ends when you unlock all of the plants and all of the traits. It was cute.

Reccomended for casual gamers or someone just looking for something to do for a few hours.

Despite probably being outside of the target audience, I really enjoyed this game. The mechanics are simple but not too tedious since there's plenty of variety in plants you can create, and it has really cute art and amusing characters. I only wish there had been more to it - perhaps different difficulty levels or a new game plus - so I could keep unlocking more plants and filling increasingly complex orders past the two hours or so it takes to play through it. If the developers made a sequel with additions like that, I would absolutely buy it.

You should try this game out before judging it.
At first, I though this game is casual game like dashing game (Taking order and serve the customer quickly to earn points).
But turn out I'm wrong, to play this game you need to know the basic of biology (about breeding plants).
You have 12 days (13 days - 1 day tutorial) to run the store and at the end of each day you have to pay your rent.
You don't need to accept all orders from the customers, sometime it's wise to just reject the order.
By finishing this game you have learn yourself about Dominant - Recessive genes and some economic stuff like how to run a shop.

A game that is more to education and fun to learn deserve an appreciation.
I have finished the game and learn how to make a quality seeds.

well, takes about 1-2h to complete this game.

maybe more something for smaller kids, since its all the same most of the time.

far too easy since you just make 2 plants of each type which are heterogenous in all traits, so you can make every order of that plant out of that pair. takes about 5 minutes to figure out and then repeat for ~1h to win the game.

too simple for adults, but i think quite good for kids to learn some basics about genetics, would recommend for 6-10 year old kids.

Crazy Plant Shop is a botanical genetics lesson disguised as a casual time management game (without the time management).

Though it aspires to be something of an interactive entry course on plant genes and reproduction, its educational value never goes so far as to attempt to beat you over the head with the fact the game is trying to teach you something. It gets its points (for as hyper simplified as they are) across through gameplay hooks rather than walls of text, and it's a surprising amount of fun. It essentially boils down to cross breeding plants while taking into account dominant and recessive genes to produce the traits you need to fill a customer's rather exact and bizarre orders.

It sounds incredibly dull, but in this case breaking things down to their utmost basics actually works in Crazy Plant Shop's favor. Traits are distinct and easy to recognize, with the biggest thing you need to keep tract of being making sure you spreed enough recessive genes around to be able to breed plants with those traits. The lack of any time limit or penalty for refusing orders you can't focus on allows you to take as much time as you need mixing and matching plants, until you've found the right combination and feel like an insane plant matchmaker.

Where the game unfortunately trips over itself a bit is the unexpectedly punishing economy, which I wouldn't hesitate to call broken in most respects. You begin with a limited, finite amount of money to start your botanist career, and ordering plants is expensive and almost never fully compensated by the amount you're paid for fulfilling orders. If you aren't meticulously micromanaging your inventory and making full use of your also limited power for using the breeding machine, you're going to find yourself stuck with no other option but to start the game over. Aside from there being a bit about how breeding plants is cheaper than buying them outright, it was never made clear to me just how exact I needed to be with my orders, and how closely I needed to watch the number of power I had left if I wanted to succeed which led to me being forced into a corner several levels in on my first playthrough with no way out.

Crazy Plant Shop's oddly restrictive monetary systems make playing in it a little more stressful than I was looking for. I wasn't allowed room to experiment because I was so scared of losing all the progress I'd made because I bought one too many plants, and this really hampers and experience that seems designed as a more lighthearted way for people to learn about plants than a typical textbook. Once the game opens up a bit in the later third and puts less pressure on your every decision it was a lot easier to see it as one of the more creative forms of edutainment I've seen. It's just a shame that I'm sure a lot of people won't get that far.

Crazy Plant Shop is an edu-tainment management/simulation game in which you use Punnett squares to selectively breed silly plants and produce offspring that conform to your customer’s specifications.

(As someone who has spent many years teaching Punnett squares, I’m aware that I’m probably not the target audience of this game, so that’s probably worth bearing in mind in the context of this review.)

I generally enjoy management/simulation games, and the idea of one centering on using biological concepts for fun and profit was very appealing to me. I was under the impression that this was a cute, casual management sim, but unfortunately, this game is pretty clearly intended more as edu-tainment to reinforce the concepts of Mendelian genetics than as a real game. The management aspects are trivial, the game progression is very linear, and determining the correct crosses to produce the required offspring is not very challenging.

I can see this game appealing to parents who want a fun way to introduce their kids to important biological concepts, and maybe to those who don’t remember much about basic biology and want a fun-ish refresher. Beyond its educational merits, though, I really don’t see any reason to play this game.

Worth the price, if you're into light puzzle and/or science-y stuff.

Essentially, you spend a few hours manipulating Punnett squares to get the traits you want based on the requests of your customers. The gamer in me wanted more to do - randomization, mutations, etc, to get more longevity out the game. But again, it was worth the price.

Biggest flaw was the mediocre voice acting. Some of the characters were better than others, but some of the accents were noticeably fake, and one in particular was inconsistent and couldn't decide what it wanted to be.

Crazy Plant Shop is a short but well-made game. It's was also very educational. I wish I had this game back in high school since this is a medium of learning that I would've been able to get into.

It takes about 1-2 playthroughs to complete over the span of ~2 hours. The achievements are simple and easy to get provided you familiarize yourself with the game's 'tutorial' during the first day.

I really liked this game. It reminds me of Recettear except you actually learn something. 4/5