Guardin' the Garden is a mix between strategic defending and puzzle-like defense combinations. The goal of the player is to defend his fenced garden area and grow it's size while being assaulted by pests.
Gardens spring up wherever the player completes a ring or fences. If a pest destroys a wall that is part of a ring, the enclosed garden area is instantly lost. Note that pests never actually touch the garden; it is gone the moment they breach the walls.
The player gains money, the single resource in the game, at a rate determined by the size of his garden. The more tiles that are covered by garden, the more money that he receives.
Our beloved motto: No friendly units. No enemy structures.
The player is able to lay down construction of new fences as well as build defenses on top of existing fences. In this way, play style and control is somewhat similar to a regular RTS except that the player is only creating defensive buildings, and buildings can only be on the wall/fence.
The enemy, on the other hand, is waves of bugs and rats that enter at predefined points on the screen (for specified waves) or appear in a general sector of the screen for random waves that are configured in the level editor. The list of enemy types includes termites, cockroaches, spitting spiders, and the mice/rats. For more information on pests see the pests page.
Most defenses are static, with the exception off the magnifying glass. The player clicks once to lay the defense down, giving him a view of the range that is possible. Then, she clicks again on a tile within this range to set the target for this defense. In the case of the magnifying glass, where the player clicks again is inconsequential. The glass targets a random bug in its range and shoots it. All other defenses fire at one area only. For more info, see defenses.
There are two fence types, wood and stone. Wood is $5 per segment, while stone is $15 per segment. See walls for more info.
CENTRAL GOAL: Levels can be two types: survival or capture-the-goal.
In survival, the player need only avoid losing for a specified period of time. A green bar on the left hand side of the screen rises slowly to the top. If the player has no garden, however, a red bar also rises on the left side of the screen. If the red bar reaches the top, the player loses.
In capture-the-goal, the player must ring with his walls one or more goal tiles that are marked by an appropriate image (golden ho). If there is one goal tile only, the player must keep this tile captured for a set period of time in order to win, marked again by the rising green bar. If there are more, the player must capture and hold ALL of the tiles in order for the green bar to begin rising. As in survival, the player loses if he has no garden for too long a period and the red bar reaches the top of the screen.
It is entirely possible for both the red bar and the green bar to be rising at the same time.