My Work

I was the designer for Grow Up working with 3 other people. The game was made in partnership with Australian Urban Growers. Our industry partner wanted a game that could be shown in schools to teach students about sustainable and innovative growing practices. 

Mechanics

Besides basic platformer mechanics I designed a plant growing system that requires the player to set values of humidity and temperature to grow certain plants to help with traversal. I designed 3 different plants: a beanstalk for moving up, a bouncy mushroom for crossing gaps and a flower for getting bees out of your way.

Level design

In order to grow different plants players would need to change the settings on the environmental controllers. This had some good use for puzzles, but also meant they would have to backtrack a lot. This problem was definitely pronounced for myself as a a designer who had to play these a lot. Playtesting was very important to gauge how actual players responded to level designs and puzzles. While backtracking wasn't as annoying for players who would play a level only once, I still made sure that alternate routes were available for backtracking to improve the experience. 

Educational content

Designing educational content was an interesting experience. We went with fun NPCs who the player can talk to for tips and educational content. At the end of the level the quiz bug NPC would ask a question related to the content of that level. I quite enjoyed writing the dialogue for the NPCs and aimed to make it a bit silly to keep players engaged. If we were to continue working on the game I would like to further integrate learning into the game by expanding the growing mechanics and deeper story telling.