Mendel
Mendel is a chill sandbox game about growing weird plants from alien genetics.
Pilot a probe on a far away planet, gather samples from the weird native flowers, and breed them together to make new hybrids. Watch their genes merge and mutate, producing strange new creations to grow in your alien gardens.
No goals. No objectives. No pressure. Just a peaceful sandbox in which to experiment, create, and relax.
Tens of thousands of possible surreal plants
Watch your plants change and mutate as their genes combine and rearrange, just like those of our own world
Inspired by science! Mendel is the first game to receive the Alfred P Sloan Foundation Public Understanding prize, recognizing a commitment to showing how beautiful the world of genetics is
"Mendel is a relaxing and creative scientific sandbox. It’s a game meant to feed your own creativity and curiosity"
- Jacob Wood, Indie Hangover
"Mendel follows in the lineage of games like Proteus or Shape of the World, providing a bright, neon landscape to get lost in...There’s something really satisfying about creating a rosy tree or sprouting plant that fits into the landscape."
- Heather Alexandra, Kotaku
"It feels like a fitting antidote to last night’s ceaseless cacophony of explosions"
- Dominic Tarason, Rock Paper Shotgun
"It was kind of like bubble wrap. You really get into it and can’t stop...planting things and trying to make them do things."
- Nathalie Lawhead, creator of Tetrageddon and Everything Is Going To Be Ok
Mendel came from a desire to make a game about creativity, but grew to become a way of sharing a fascination with genetics.
I first started looking into genetics as one option among many for how to generate the plants, and was hooked almost immediately. The sheer range of possibilities encompassed in genetics, from the power of a single gene to the complexities arisen from many, was inspiring.
Driven by these discoveries, Mendel adapted, becoming not just about creating beautiful flowers, but also a vehicle for sharing my enthusiasm for this science I was learning about. I wanted to give everyone a chance to discover the same awesome revelations that I had. Now, rather than just being a patch of virtual soil for growing digital plants, Mendel is also a lab. It is a space for players to conduct their own experiments, to make something beautiful and, while doing so, discover the wonders of genetics for themselves. Others have shared in that vision too.
Recognizing what I was trying to do, the Alfred P Sloan Foundation awarded Mendel the Public Understanding Award, it is the first game to receive that honor, and with their help I have been able to finish the game as I wanted to make it.
