Way to go on that planting round everyone! Folks sowed 99 seeds, including auto-re-enrolled and manul re-submissions! That is a bodacious bounty of seeds for this year’s comp!! I would also like to remind folks that we’ve significantly expanded the sprouting round for this year’s comp. In fact, it just opened today and will be open for 3 entire months. Literally!
The trade off with such a hearty disbursement of seeds is perhaps feeling a bit overwhelmed as to which and how many to select for your project. So I thought perhaps seeing them listed and discussed here, a couple at a time, might be more accessible than navigating through various itch pages. Sort of like a review thread, but more so general thoughts and musing. I wanted to give each seed a little space to breathe and maybe a chance to woo someone willing to nurse it to maturity.
Reviewing seeds should also be much less time-consuming than reviewing games, so I was also hoping this might encourage others to maybe do the same. Given the relatively small size of most of the seeds, as I discuss them I’ll be replicating them here in full (under a detail dropdown) as much as possible. That way readers don’t need to go back and forth to take part. Please feel free to share your thoughts and feelings as well. I’m hoping for this to be a group exploration. Oh, and I’ll focus entirely on seeds I did not author, for obvious reasons.
Here we go!
Content Warning: A Seed by @catskets.
Text - Theme or Moral.
CC-BY-NC.
Ironically no Content Warnings.
Project Page
Blurb:
a seed, not a game, for seedcomp. a list of content warnings, some from fanfiction, some from my mind, some from the depths of memory. use at least two of these in your seedcomp game.
Seed:
contentwarning.pdf (802.8 KB)
First of all, one of the things that makes this seed brilliant isn’t even the seed itself; it’s the small detail included in the blurb. Rather than expecting a perspective author to somehow utilize the entire list of content warnings, they instead encouraged folks to pick two or more. This allows this seed to be layered on top of a variety of other seeds in an astonishing variety of ways. Really appreciate seeing seeds designed with a “Yes, and…” philosophy!
As for the seed itself, I first want to appreciate the format. This could have been a simple text seed, just a list of content warnings. It would have accomplished the same goal. But no! The author took the extra effort to render it on a handsome background, and then cast the content warnings across them like seeds cast upon the ground. Your eye rambles across it instead of lawnmowering it like normal text. In fact, I had to read it a few times before I stopped finding entries I had previously missed.
I really enjoy the range of the content warnings. You have the legitimately horrible, the absurd, the comical, the bizarrely specific, all each begging to be interpreted in different ways. Well done on making a very versatile seed! Looking forward to seeing how people decide to use it. 
Anatomical Angel by @AmandaB.
Images - Artwork.
CC-BY-NC.
Content Warnings: Nudity, gore
Project Page
Blurb:
Warning! These images contain nudity and internal human anatomy that people may find gross.
An artwork seed for SeedComp. The original painting-- L’Ange Anatomique– is by Jacques-Fabien Gautier Dagoty, done in 1746 and is in the public domain. Image available here for download.
My reinterpretation of the painting, also called Anatomical Angel, is also available for download. Media: paper, pen, paint, silk hand embroidery on canvas, bones, fabric, wood. I retain all rights to the image, but give permission for its use and/or modification as cover art or game art for a SeedComp game.
The original painting is fascinating for sexualizing even women’s internal organs, but it’s also beautiful, elevating an anatomical study into art. My version attempts to retain this feeling of sexualizing women literally to death, but to expand the concept.
First of all, wow! The mix of textures and materials, including real bone, and the palatable depth of the 3D result is very impressive. I highly encourage everyone to download the image and zoom in. The detail just keeps going, down to the individual words of the prose printed on her skin to what her hand is resting on to the very expression on her face. The presentation with the curtains and the shadow box, drawing attention to how she’s on display, and the legitimately beautiful embroidery, all just underline how much attention and love went into this piece.
On from that, the subject material is unapologetically bold, and embraces the visceral reality most avoid thinking about; the truth that we’re all actually slimy grey skull slugs piloting around in grotesque muscular-skeletal meatsuits. But she goes beyond that, and tries to capture the inherent beauty beyond the grotesque. For whatever it’s worth, I was already a fan of this author’s previous games, but I’ll now be following up any other artwork I can find by them as well.
As a couple last points, I appreciate the peek into the studio, intended or not. Seeing the cubbies, pegs, handtools, and rough plywood desk is nice. There’s something very pragmatic about it; it reminds me of my Dad’s workshop when I was a child. Also, I really appreciate looping in existing public domain work which really captures the spirit of Seedcomp. On top of that, including the material itself to see the before and after really just adds to the whole thing. While I know a variety of titles from other provenances could repurpose such a thing as a cover image, I’m low key hoping this nails someone in the feels and they take it as a central inspiration for a game. Either way, thank you for sharing this; I think it is cool as hell!
Again, please feel free to comment or offer your own interpretations. I am not an authority by any means! I’ll remind everyone that the individual itch.io project pages allow both comment and ratings outside of the comp, so if you’d like to, I encourage you to take advantage of that as well (they also grant you access to other works by the same authors as we go along 
). I’ll be following up with another pair of seeds sometime soon.
(P.S. I know that the Seedcomp.org site is down right now. Actively tinkering with it. Not a webbuilder by trade, so taking me longer than it should. Sorry for the inconvenience. Edit: Still tinkering, but the last year’s site should be visible again in the meantime.)
