Garden Grow

Description

This autobiographical project shows the steps my kids and I grow our garden together. Not only do we enjoy planting and harvesting together, but the kids see what it takes to grow food and have pride in the steps to make that food grow. That picture is the kale Rafi planted from seed.

Reflection

I wanted to do a project centered around an environmental issue and the cyclical nature of the growing process. This game allows the main player (kids or anyone else who wants to play) to feel in a small way what it would be like to take care of a small garden from prepping the soil to harvest the rewards of their work.

(That picture is the beans I plant every year from seeds saved from the year before.)

Design Process

The storyboards I created were drawn as four (what I thought were simple) scenes.

Planting the seeds, caring for the plants, harvesting and composting. In this gray boxed version, you see the seed being planted.

I added multiple levels that changed the number of plants you have to care for.

I wanted to add a time-based element that included removing weeds before they got too big. This is a genuine gardening problem! To do this, I separated the development of the weeds from the development of the plants to make it easier, but both parts were pretty difficult to create and to then put together.

I got my kids to playtest it, since they came up with the most ambitious ideas! I finally convinced my son to compose some music for it. I added the music. They both loved playing the game, and other people's games too!

Little did I know how complex the game would actually become. Adding he images fom the vegetables, tools and weeds made it hard to control the sizes of the shapes as it was when they were "gray boxed". I learned that you can't make an image to be size 0, or I think they go to the default size possibly? Even though I couldn't quite finish getting the time-based element done, I'm proud of what I learned doing this project. And my kids had fun working on it and playtesting it with me. That's what really matters in life, right?