Uh-oh! It looks like your partner's passion is being tempted by the neighbor! The only thing that can woo back your partner's love are the flowers that grow in your tiny garden.
Grab rain drops and water the dry soil in your garden to make flowers grow. Collect enough flowers for a bouquet and you will bring your partner's heart back home...for now.
But watch out for those pesky bunnies and snails! They'll be wandering around your garden giving you all sorts of grief.
Inspired by UFO 50's "Magic Garden" game, Bouquets & Bunnies puts a spin on the classic Snake game. Collect flowers to keep your partner happy and your multiplier up as you chase a high score!
CONTROLS
A gamepad or joystick is recommended. Keyboard controls available.
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Use the D-pad (arrow keys) to move the player.
You cannot go in the opposite direction without turning first. -
Press X button (X key) to place water drops.
- Start button (P key) for pause menu: toggle music, reset scores
GAMEPLAY
Gather water drops by walking over them, forming a train behind you that also serves as an obstacle (much like the classic Snake game).
Place water drops over the dirt squares and flowers will grow. Water drops that don't get placed over a dirt spot are ignored and lost.
Collect the flowers before they wilt to build up the bouquet you need to woo back your partner. If you collect the necessary number of flowers (top-left) before your partner reaches the neighbor (top-center), your partner will return home and the multiplier will increase (top-right). The number of flowers needed to make a bouquet will increase each time and your partner will again slowly move towards the neighbor. If your partner reaches the neighbor, the multiplier will reset.
Bunnies will spawn over time and act as obstacles as they move around the garden. If you allow a dirt section to expire, a snail will spawn as a stationary obstacle.
Every 8 flowers planted will result in a carrot appearing. Walk over a carrot to start a power-up timer. During this period you can walk over bunnies and snails. The power-up period only lasts a limited time but the timer will reset if you eat another carrot.
Your game will end if you hit your water drop train, go out of bounds, or hit a bunny/snail outside power-up time.
SCORING
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Each square of dirt that is watered scores +5*N per dirt square watered.
For example, 3 dirt squares watered scores 30 points (5+10+15). -
The first flower you collect scores 10 points. Each flower after adds +10 points to your score chain. The score chain will reset if there are no flowers in the garden.
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The first bunny killed during a power-up period scores 50 points, each bunny after scores +25 points until the power-up period expires.
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The first snail killed during a power-up period is scores 100 points, each snail after scores +50 points until the power-up period expires.
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The multiplier is applied only to the first score of a chain and does not apply to the incremental scoring thereafter. For example, if your multiplier is 3x and you kill a bunny, the first bunny scores 150 (50x3) points but each bunny thereafter is still just +25 points.
- The scoring chain treats bunnies and snails the same, so as long as there is one bunny or snail on the board, the scoring chain will continue.
EXTRAS
- Hit down on the title page to see your play stats
- Robots need love too
FEEDBACK WELCOMED
Please share your feedback here or on Bluesky at @morningtoast.bsky.social
Report any bugs or crashes in the comments. I'll do my best to fix them and publish an update as quickly as possible.
CREDITS
Design, code, and art by Brian Vaughn (2025)
Music by Gruber Music - "Busy Bee Toe Tapper"
Special thanks to: UFO50, Jen V., Russel Ashby, SkaterDee
Inspired by "Magic Garden" from UFO50
Making the game
This is not the game I expected to make or release this year. I had been working on Chain of Hercules since late 2024 but I kept hitting roadblock after roadblock. In the burnout break that followed, I got UFO50 and quickly fell in love with "Magic Garden" and decided that PICO-8 needed that type of game.
This is one of the few times where I just decided to make a clone. Sure, I tossed in a few things of my own so I wouldn't call it a Magic Garden demake...but eitherway, it felt great!
I suffer from design-as-you-go syndrome when it comes to game dev'ing. I usually have a solid idea/mechanic and dive right in, coming up with new gimmicks, learning new code tricks, and otherwise increasing the scope as I go. It's the reason Chain of Hercules (and many others) still sits in unfinished limbo.
This time, having 95% of the mechanics sorted out for me made Bouquets & Bunnies feel like a breeze. I got this done in 2 months, which is unheard of for me. It helped that (for once) the art style fit my skill so I didn't derail worrying about sprites. But what really sold me on finishing was having my wife play an early version. She has not played UFO50 at all so it was totally new and what I expected to be the usual 5-minute "that's nice" review turned into a half hour of her trying to get a score.
B&B was also a very much needed reminder that fancy coding can be my undoing. I easily get caught up in trying to optimize code too early and coming up with "amazing" do-it-all objects and math, and honestly, it usually ends up with me getting angry at bloated code and yelling at my screen. It's not as complicated as I end up making it...as I was reminded by Russ Ashby after some playtesting. He was also making a "Magic Garden" clone for Pictron and graciously shared some snippets that saved my game. Good, simple code. I was over-thinking it as usual.
All that to say that making Bouquets & Bunnies wasn't the grind that so many games end up becoming. It might be a clone but I'm still proud of getting it done, done pretty well, and released for all to play.
Now available on Itch: https://morningtoast.itch.io/bouquetsbunnies
Downloads include Windows and PICO-8 cart.
This is fun! Getting sweet well planned combo's is really rewarding. The snake/farm-sim mechanic works like a charm but intended directions don't always register. I suspect that some input buffering might supercharge this potent mechanic.
Thanks for playing, glad it was fun for you. Given the small grid the turns probably aren't 100% but it should be plenty good for playing and ranking up the scores...just gotta get used to the pace of the movement (not unlike Magic Garden).
Anyone unlock the robot yet?
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