The vertical slice for this game was made for a 3-week group project with 5 other students.
It can be played on itch: Itch.io/PickyPlanters.
The trailer can be seen here: Youtube/PickyPlanters.
As the lead designer on this project, I worked on the level design for the level in the vertical slice and two additional levels. I also did playtesting, sound design and worked on the business plan.
Concept
Picky planters is a cozy puzzle game that uses the requirements plants need to grow to make a puzzle. Some plants are water plants, others need shade, etc.
The player is a gardener/garden designer. The plants are puzzle pieces that the player places into a mostly empty garden to meet the requirements of both the plants and the client who owns the garden.
Because it uses real world plants, the game is also educational. People can learn about different plants and the influence the state of the world around them has on them.
Level Design
For this project, the level design started with coming up with funny clients to centre the level around. After that I had to find plants that suit the client and their garden. Because the game has an educational element, this information had to be extensive and come from a reliable source. The last step was to create a puzzle with the gardens shape, the plants that can be placed and the client’s requirements.
Sound Design
For the first step, I made a list with all the sounds the game needs. This included music, level specific ambience and sound effects for every action the player can take. Of each sound, multiple versions were made to A/B test what works best. I used Ableton to cut out the sounds, make seamless loops, balance the ambience mix and volume for all the sounds.
Playtesting
Because the game is a cozy educational puzzle game, it has a rather wide target audience:
• People who don’t have or can’t maintain a garden and just want to make pretty gardens in a game to replace that.
• The education system: our game can teach kids about different plants and what they need to thrive, which is becoming more important for kids to learn considering climate change and the increased need for thriving green spaces.
• People who like to play cozy/casual puzzle games, often older people or people who don’t game much.
This meant that it had to be play tested on a lot of different people. The first playtest we did was on a smaller group, the main purpose was to take bugs and level/game design that didn’t work well out of the prototype. Once we had a vertical slice, we tested it on our target audiences. A school class for example, to ensure that younger kids were able to play our game and learn about plants from it. We also tested it on a group of older people who aren’t used to computers/games. Another important question was if the game is fun to play.
