Club of a Seed Merchant Game Design

Before pursuing a career in the gaming industry I had intended of becoming an ethnobotanist (a scientist that studies the use and impact of plants in cultures). Inspired from this, I began to experiment by creating a crop growing game with a twist. Crops would have more than one harvest stage and there being seed scarcity within the game.

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While it started as a experimental piece with a vague design concept, it was developed further through trial and error. This I took from my own gameplay as well as observing my family experiences to it. This was added to from research into the UI design and layout of other games within the same genre.

A decision that was adapted early on in development was the main in game UI structure. At first it was designed in a V format to create a more central focus point. This made the game play harder and increased the time between actions from mouse movement in Fitt’s law. Another factor was the action UI would eventually become bigger and more complicated. Instead of this, the UI was change to appear at the bottom of the screen and split into a help and key actions section. This helped improve player interaction fit better to a Z shape hierarchy pattern referred in Gestalt Principles.

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Another aspect considered was colour and making it visually accessible. Originally I looked at having a monochrome colour palette. It was decided to base it off the yellow and brown colours found in natural, farm genre objects like wood and straw. By doing this it would help meet player expectations and is similar to other in the genre. Also at the time I was experimenting with a different production method. For this I would creating in greyscale and then apply a single background colour to the overlayers. It had the advantage of being quick to produce, allow colours variation, and being able to recycle UI for other projects. However, a disadvantage was the varying accessibility contrast ratio and not always achieving the 3:1 . Also the cosy and tranquil emotion design weren't coming through the way I expected it to. To help, the colour palette was broadened with brighter colours that fitted better to player expectations.

One big design challenge in the game was making the seed scarcity mechanic into a positive experience. How should the player gain seeds besides growing them? What happens if the player runs out? A solution was a seed purchase function while the missions and reward system was being built. This made the game functional but clashed with the purpose of the game- seeds are rare and hard to get. Rather than remove it completely, I decided to use it as a solution to a different problem. What happens if you run out of seeds and have no way of gaining more through missions? If left unsorted this would create a negative experience of feeling lost and punished. To reduce this, whenever a player gets into this situation they have the ability to buy a single seed of the crop.