Core Loop

Prepare the soil, plant your seeds, nurture your shoots into blooming, and harvest them for human satisfaction- all under the pressure of time and while being beset by the forces of mother nature. That's the core or what Gnome Gardeners is about.

The goal was to create a stressful experience, where the fun came in form of scrambling to manage all tasks thrown your way. The game will demand multiple actions of you at the same time, but has also locked these abilities behind tools of which you can only hold one. Additionally, tools can be dropped anywhere, making it possible that you find yourelf sprinting accross the garden in a frenzy to save your plants.

Expanded Mechanics

While a lot never made it into the prototype, I had the opportunity to expand on the designs and systems on paper. The two main branches of these designs were environmental hazards and special plants.

While tools were intended to be systemical in nature (i.e. persistent and predictable in their functions), the environment was allowed to be much more contextual. Various critters, such as bugs and birds, different climates and types of plant beds were designed and planned for, which would have expanded on the limited actions the player could make - thus being able to rely on player familiarity while still introducing challenges.

Levels

Each level was themed and built around featuring one of the limitations of the game -i.e. there was a primary obstacle in each level. Once a limitation had been featured, it would be used to highlight and another, thus slowly building and introducing a system of limitations that the player needed to overcome.

Key Takeaways

I learned a lot from Gnome Gardeners, but there were a few primary key takeaways:

• Communicating design concepts to a team isn't as easy at it seems. Everyone understands things differently, and there will always have to be accomodations made to overcome these challenges.
  

• Designing for co-op scenarios isn't just throwing another player into the mix. Putting effort in making sure that the actions of one player is relevant, fun, and systemically linked with the other turned out to be among the most important takeaways.
  

• I learned about the importance of managing the scope of a project. Gnome Gardeners aimed high, but didn't take into acount that we were all new to many of the aspects involved in making it. Scaling down a concept, doesn't have to be a bad thing, and that is something I have kept in mind since.
  

• I learned the importance of not getting stuck with an idea. Test it, iterate and let it go if need be - kill your darlings as they say.