PlantPlanet

What is PlantPlanet?

PlantPlanet is a homemade gamejam project made in 2 weeks. It is a mini-game with up to an hour of playtime. According to the story, the protagonist is an earth-boring dung beetle (Geotrupes stercorarius) who just woke up from his winter sleep. He sees that his little planet was trashed/littered by humans who took off with their spaceships after completely worn it out/depleted it. So the little beetle is left with the task of collecting all the garbage and make the planet flourish again. 

Why was it made? 

The current turmoil of the world is affecting everybody’s life on a certain level. Added to this uncertainty is the endlessness of big projects and the multitude of everyday life which narrows one’s imagination and enthusiasm. It feels so good to escape from this state! I’ve long wanted to participate in game jams, so I decided to take a few days off and organize a homemade quarantine jam. 

How was it made? 

The basic idea soon came together. The original plan was to finish the game in a week, but as usual, one always wants to add a little bit of something extra or refine the existing elements. 

As a graphic designer it’s hard to get into programming, so I’ve spent most of my time learning as well as experimenting with many “how can I solve this and that” ideas. Luckily, there are plenty of documentation and forums about unity, and the corgi engine also helped me with the basics, saving me time for the more creative parts. 

I’ve worked on the visuals with Edina Fazekas and fortunately, the graphics soon came together. During our daily walks we took pictures of interesting plants that we also built /incorporated into the revitalized environment. I drew the track and the characters, she did the flowers, trees, trash and many other elements that fill up the world. Without her it wouldn’t have been ready in such a short time! 

After a week it was pretty much put together and even though we wanted a chill game, it felt a little flat. We knew PlantPlanet had more potential, so decided to give it another week to complete the finishing touches. That’s when I invented the night rummaging butterfly, which originally would have laid dirt on the platforms and injuring the player by touching, but it seemed jumping over them was more frustrating than enjoyable. This is why it got the skill of whipping, which can be avoided if the player is clever, yet keeps the attention, because sometimes the bug can surprise us. :) 

I could devote a maximum of one day to making the animation! The flowers and trees have 3 states, to make movements between the transitions was very time consuming. Also, there was less time to develop the characters, the focus was on the protagonist and the night rummaming butterfly. 

I had many other ideas, such as rats infecting the flowers that produce sunlight, angry wasps coming at night from which we can hide in the ground, but these didn’t fit into the time frame so they were excluded from the established theme. 

On the second week I was working besides making PlantPlanet, so by then the development was much slower, but luckily I’ve already had most of the coding done. On the last few days tasks like fine tuning and bug fixes remained, and an end goal was added: to make the story complete.

What did I learn? 

A lot about programming, for sure. Studying the corgi engine opened up my eyes even more, it gave me a deeper insight into this specific kind of thinking. I also had to solve many problems and figure out options and executions on my own. 

Picking up the object was a great challenge (grab object feature), and the mechanics of the garbage areas, to prevent plants from growing there until that platform has been cleared. These were perhaps the most time consuming tasks, I definitely learned a lot about using raycast.

I also dealt a lot with the boiler as a central element. With the help of it we can create light by burning garbage / coins and cleverly raise the light level, because the trees and flowers only grow above a certain sunlight level. 

As well as how to design a game with all its components, especially in this short amount of time. 

I see a fantasy in expanding the project and we have many more ideas, but for a while I want to keep the game “simple”, yet who knows what the future holds... :) 

Drop a comment if you liked the game or wanna give a feedback! :-)

Have fun!

Check out another game I'm making: Ghostboy

And the Pengame (resurrection in progress with unity)

Credits:

Tamás Czuder

Edina Fazekas 

Music: Nctrnm: Flight