Sprout Path
The Project
Sprout Path was the resulting game from a 4 day long game jam with 4 random game developers put into a team.
The game jams theme was to create a game based around a selected word from a list to base the game off of.
My team and I decided to choose the word "collecting" as a design challenge for our game, creating a garden for player to collect seed and plant different flowers.
The Process
The team started by concepting how we wanted players to play our collecting game, we gathered different references from other games like Plant vs. Zombies and Minecraft. We went with the idea of players going out into the wilderness to gather different plants for a garden, having different rarities shown through unimpressive plants to weird and cool plants for the garden. We started designing the systems, the amount of plants, how players collected seeds, level design, inventory, interatcting with tilled dirt tiles, etc.
Reflection
Overall, this game jam was one of the best that I have taken part in. Even if we only had 4 days to create the game, there is a solid game-loop for players to enjoy; a fun relaxing experience that lets players decorate their garden and express themselves. This made me realize how many different systems go together to create a game experience, needing to think about how everything interacts with each other and what icons/UX is necisary for players to understand a tutorial-less games.