~*Welcome to FocusGarden!*~

Summary

Enable focus mode while you lock in on studying, homework, chores, or any other activity! When you're finished, use the hours you spent studying to take care of your garden by watering your growing plants, or watching full-grown plants to find bugs! You can sell fully grown plants for coins, which serve as the currency for buying new plants. Grow your garden, get rich, and amass an army of bugs -- all while getting things done in the real world!

FocusGarden was created during Hack(H)er 413 2026 at UMass Amherst by Ellie Blalock, Sofia Leung, and Isabella Harrington -- all first-time hackers! Please enjoy our game and the 24 hours of love and care we put into it!! :)

~~ Happy gardening! ~~

** Please read controls before playing!! **

Controls

Focus timer

Press the "Begin Focus" button to enter focus mode. When finished, press the "I'm done!" button in the center of the screen. Real-time hours spent in focus mode are counted and added to your "hours" balance, visible below the focus button when out of focus mode.

Gardening

Plots

There are 5 equally-sized plots (visibly separated by vertical dark spaces on the dirt) available for interaction. Each can hold one plant.

Garden Menu

Right-click to bring up the gardening button at the lower-right of your mouse. Right-click again to remove it.

Buying plants

In the garden menu, click "buy" to enter selection. Click the plot you'd like to plant in (if you click on an occupied plot, the purchase will be canceled). After selecting the plot, click the key corresponding to the first letter of the plant you'd like to plant, visible at the bottom of the screen. 

There are 5 available plants:

• Lettuce - 2 coins
• Tomato - 4 coins
• Milkweed - 6 coins
• Bee balm - 8 coins
• Geranium - 10 coins

There can be duplicate plants.

Watering plants

After having acquired hours while focusing, you can use them to grow your plants! Click "water" in the gardening menu to enter selection mode. Click the plot you'd like to water, and 1 hour will be consumed to advance the plant's growth by 1 stage. All plants have 5 stages of growth! If you click on an empty plot, nothing will happen, and no hours will be consumed.

Watching plants

A fully-grown plant can be watched for a chance of spawning a bug somewhere on the screen. Click "watch" in the garden menu and click on the plant you'd like to watch. Watching costs 1 hour. The more expensive a plant, the rarer its bug's chance to spawn. A plant must be stage 5 (fully-grown) to be watched. Plants that aren't fully grown or empty plots will not spawn a bug or consume hours.

Selling plants

When fully grown, a plant can be sold for 1.5x its buy value! Click "sell" in the garden menu, then click on a stage 5 (fully-grown) plant to sell it and earn coins. Nothing will happen when clicking on an empty plot or a growing plant.

Bugs

When you watch a plant, there is a chance to spawn a bug! Each plant has a different bug it can spawn (so there are 5 possible bugs), and a different chance of spawning that bug when watched. Bugs will spawn randomly on the screen and stay permanently until the game is closed! Amass your bug army!

Important: The game does not save when closed! We plan on adding a save system, but for now, progress will be lost.

Thank you for reading!

Visit our GitHub to see the source code if you're curious! 

This game was made entirely in Python using PyGame for the game itself, and PyInstaller to wrap it into an executable.

Please email ejblalock17@gmail.com if you encounter any errors :)