It runs in three lines:

git clone https://github.com/thehwang/alans-garden

cd alans-garden/prototype

swift run GardenApp     # macOS GUI (SpriteKit) — or `swift test` to see every level solved

How I Built It

I built the brain before the body. GardenCore is a tiny deterministic

cellular automaton — grow one step, run the frames, compare to the target — with

zero UI and a test suite that proves every level is winnable and that nonsense

rules correctly fail. Because growth is monotonic, the exact match (when it

exists) happens at one single magic moment. That's the whole puzzle: find the rule

whose bloom lands on that moment.

A few decisions I'm fond of:

• 
  Two verbs, infinite gardens. Every rule is just directions + Turing's pair:
  activation ("only grow next to X") and inhibition ("avoid X"), plus
  clustering ("only grow where you're well-supported"). From those, borders,
  spots, and clean splits all emerge.


• 
  Levels that author themselves. Rather than hand-draw targets (and risk an
  impossible puzzle), each level grows its own target from the intended rule — so
  it's guaranteed solvable, and the sunlight budget is computed, not guessed.


• 
  A trailer that actually plays the game. A Hammerspoon script drives real
  clicks and types real sentences, with subtitles timed to the bloom — no fake
  screen-recording magic.

Prize Category

Best Ode to Alan Turing. This isn't Turing as a logo on a menu screen — the

mechanics are his science. Flowers are cellular-automaton programs; the

activator/inhibitor pair driving every level is the discrete form of his

reaction-diffusion model; and "you write the rule, the pattern grows itself" is

literally morphogenesis. It's also a soft tribute to the man: a hopeful,

generative garden grown from his most overlooked, most beautiful idea.

Best Google AI Usage. Remember the tagline — if flowers could think, how

would they talk? I made that a real feature with the Gemini API. Type a wish

like "flood the bed with B but keep a gap around A", hit Ask Gemini, and it

translates your sentence into the game's exact rule grammar using

responseSchema-constrained structured JSON — then the toggles light up and

the garden grows it.