Turtle Meadow 🐢🍓

A cozy Python/Pygame mini-game where a small turtle explores a meadow, collects strawberries, and unlocks a picnic basket as a quest reward.

Current Preview

Status

First playable version complete.

Gameplay

Use WASD or the arrow keys to guide the turtle through the meadow. Collect 10 strawberries to unlock the picnic basket reward, then click Claim Basket to place it in the meadow. Extra strawberries can still be collected after the quest is complete.

Features

• Custom pixel-art game assets
• Tiled grass background with decorative flowers
• Smooth keyboard movement with delta time
• Normalized diagonal movement for consistent speed
• Screen borders to keep the turtle inside the window
• Turtle direction changes based on movement
• Turtle walking animation while moving
• Strawberry collection with improved random respawn placement
• Strawberry counter and cozy quest progress messages
• Flowers sway when touched by the turtle
• Quest completion reward pop-up with a claim button
• Picnic basket reward after completing the strawberry goal
• Cozy background music

What I Learned

• Structuring a simple Pygame game loop
• Loading, scaling, and drawing custom pixel-art assets
• Drawing sprites in the correct layer order
• Using delta time and Pygame Vector2 for smoother, normalized movement
• Creating simple sprite animations with frame lists and timers
• Flipping sprites to reuse animation frames for left and right movement
• Using timers and math.sin to create temporary visual effects
• Storing multiple game objects as dictionaries inside a list
• Working with Rect objects, hitboxes, collision detection, and random respawns
• Rendering strawberry counter and quest messages with Pygame fonts
• Using a helper function to generate valid strawberry spawn positions
• Handling mouse clicks with Rect.collidepoint
• Using game state variables for reward pop-ups and unlockable items
• Drawing a simple in-game reward pop-up with rectangles and transparency

Built With

• Python
• Pygame

How to Run

Note: This project was developed with Python 3.13. Pygame may not install correctly with Python 3.14 on Windows, so Python 3.13 is recommended.

Install the required package:

py -3.13 -m pip install -r requirements.txt

Run the game:

py -3.13 main.py