The experience of playing SEED is super fresh, unique, yet also incredibly familiar. It’s not The Sims, Rimworld, or SimCity; it’s somehow all of these and more.
In SEED, you’re responsible for nurturing and guiding virtual characters called Seedlings who exist in an ever-evolving Society. Help them get a job, study at university, make meaningful relationships, and explore their passions. It’s time to bring out your inner guardian angel because your Seedling will need your support to live a healthy and fulfilled life.
SEED is a living, breathing world that is constantly evolving. This means that every Seedling and player is interconnected, and each one has an impact on everyone else. Every Seedling is someone’s responsibility, and most of the buildings, businesses, and houses are owned and operated by players. From your Seedling’s economic standing to their happiness, everything is interdependent on others.
You’ll care for your Seedling for a time, then they’ll eventually contribute to society. When your Seedling gets a job, they are helping another player’s business. When they shop at a store, they are buying from a neighbor or even a neighboring Society. When you invite another Seedling to share an activity or begin a relationship, you are building connections across your Society and creating your very own community.
While SEED as a game is very easy to understand, raising a successful Seedling is full of nuance. Let’s start with your first days in your chosen Society.
You begin SEED in the Campus, the starter hub for new residents of your chosen Society. Here all your Seedling’s basic needs are looked after. There are bunk beds for sleep, bathrooms where they can get cleaned up, and vending machines to get food. You have a little starting money but it won’t last very long. Around the city there are several properties you can engage with to provide entertainment, food, and other enrichment, but these cost money to engage with. Player-owned businesses are occasionally free to access, but that’s rare. The bottom line is that your Seedling needs a job.
The best employment options require special skills, which are either obtained through studying or life experience. Going to university costs money, so whether you decide to make that investment is completely up to you. Your Seedling can still earn a comfortable wage working an unskilled job. However, if you decide to invest in higher education, you will see payoffs like higher wages and more opportunities. It was only after setting a schedule for my Seedling with 16 hours of their day split between work and study that I started to seriously question what kind of parent I would be. I vowed to offer a much kinder upbringing for my second Seedling, trying to avoid how this mirrors the older and younger sibling dynamic I’m sure many reading this have experienced.
In SEED, the social strata is more implied than it is implicit. I wanted my Seedlings to prosper and thrive but how I went about that had an impact on their personality. My Seedling was studious, hard-working, and picked up interests in tech. All good. But he also developed a cruel outlook on the world and others. That was not so good. As with real people, some traits are innate and they’ll always think that way, but others develop based on their experiences and how you as a Cultivator guide them.
This is why relationships are important for your Seedling. They will meet, interact, and engage with others as they move around the world. Your Seedling has specific needs, which include food, shelter, and relationships. Within relationships, Seedlings need to fulfill intellectual, emotional, and sexual needs. Given that my Seedling was now a bit unpleasant to be around, they were struggling to maintain friendships or build closer bonds with others. My well-meaning ‘work hard and study’ routine had left them financially well off but adrift in Society. Whoops. To combat this, I made some changes to their schedule, which let them socialize. In the end, they did make some friends, and while I wasn’t sure if I approved of the company they kept, they seemed happy.
It’s experiences like this that lead you to spend a long long time in SEED. It’s the type of game where you see no good reason to ever close it down. Even when you’re not online, your Seedling continues going about their day in the simulation. It’s a bit like an idle game, where you can choose to directly engage when you want, and then check back in from time to time to see if your Seedling has developed any new traits or met anyone interesting. In the same way that reality TV draws people in, SEED has a voyeuristic quality to it that is hard to look away from.
While, similarly to the Sims, you have the ability to directly control your Seedlings, in SEED you find yourself not wanting to most of the time. It’s far more interesting to lightly guide your Seedlings as they express their own desires. In SEED the world keeps on running when you’re not watching. You don’t need to spend every moment actively engaged, yet I’m always drawn back in to see what’s changed. Mark my words: SEED is going to occupy a chunk of your brain and not move from there. It is well worth keeping your eye on this one.
If you’re ready to guide your Seedlings in collaboration with others in this new and ever-evolving Society, then go to the SEED website and join the play session starting August 14!