Plant Monster Mash

Farm
Fertilizer Vendor

Inspiration

Our overall designs and concepts draw inspiration from two distinct sources. The game concept is primarily centered around the indie game Stardew Valley. We took a strong liking to the cozy overall vibe of the game and the changing seasons, which add different difficulties and challenges. We also pulled monster plant hybrid designs from the game Plants vs. Zombies. We wanted to use the combat format identified in this game to introduce children to threats facing farming communities.

What it does

This game starts players in spring, giving them a simple introduction to the mechanics and a fruitful growing season. As time progresses players earn money for selling their crops at the end of the season to buy new crops and growing materials to make them stronger. The goal is to have enough crops and upgrades that the player can defeat the final boss, Winter.

How we built it

We started by bouncing ideas and concepts around, finding reference images from other games and real-world examples then defining an overall objective for the game. From there we build stairs that player will climb to achieve their goal. Once we identified the different pieces we needed we used the organizing tool, Trello, to divide work and track our progress.

Challenges we ran into

A major challenge we ran into was that we didn't have any prior understanding of game design and development going into it. However, we used the resources available to us and took things one step at a time.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Despite our lack of understanding, we were able to work together to create a functional game that could potentially be used to educate others moving forward.

What we learned

We learned different aspects of game development and how to effectively use the tools available to use to deepen our understanding. This experience also taught us not to doubt ourselves and to trust our abilities to do great things.

What's next for Plant Monster Mash

While Plant Monster Mash was a one-off idea for a programming competition, we see future updates and amendments to the game adding different agricultural technologies to add the player and increase crop strength, lengthening the growing time to allow more crop production and unpredictable events that farmers face such as infected harvest and drought.